The Art of Manipulation

I have read lots of books regarding influence. The Art of Manipulation: How to Get Anybody to do What You Want by Omar Johnson would have been better if I hadn’t read many books like it prior. It is also a very short read, so I’m surprised I didn’t jump on this one earlier? Oh well. A lot of the book is hokey nonsense, in regards to “using this new found power…”. But there were a few good points that I liked:

Everyone uses manipulation. It can be used for good or bad. Children learn the art very early and are quick to deploy it in many forms. With two young kids of my own, I can attest to this.

A person using force or coercion is not manipulating or influencing. Simply bullying to get short-term outcomes.                                                                                                                         Influence comes through the process of communicating, words or actions, and ideology  or a belief system that you believe in and want others to understand and ultimately believe in themselves. Influence requires intelligence, well-reasoned thoughts, respectable actions, and sometimes persistence. 

Another good item from the book:

People allow themselves to be influenced because it’s often easier to listen to (seemingly) rational, well-reasoned thoughts and ideas from others. In essence, most of us want to be influenced so that we can feel assured that we are doing the right thing in our lives, making the right decisions, and that alleviates a tremendous amount of stress….People allow themselves to be influenced because it. provides comfort.

And this:

The moment you begin to take advantage of the people who trust you the most is the moment when you begin to lose influence and power. 

There are a few other good nuggets in the text. It’s short so worth cruising through, but didn’t provide as much as I would have liked.

 

The Master Algorithm

Computers are changing our lives in more ways than we know. They have an idea of the type of person that we are and try to sell to that person. You must manage how the machines see you…. and The Master Algorithm by Pedro Domingos makes you keenly aware of this. It is basically the short history of machine learning. He does a thorough but not overly technical review of the basic types of machine learning. It does seem a little deeper than I like from time to time, but overall it was a good rundown.

The overall summary of purpose is to help people understand these algorithms that they use every day. It’s important to know what type of learner is behind specific things we use so we can identify their possible shortcomings. The man that doesn’t understand the technologies that guide him is like a man with a car and no sense how to drive it.

Machine learning has infiltrated our lives in many ways that people don’t typically realize. From where beer is placed inside Wal-Marts (basic algorithm discover people buy diapers and beer at the same time), to your friends on Facebook, to the types of advertisements you see. It is important to understand how these algorithms see you, and modify your searches and online activity to paint the picture you would like these algorithms to see and what to pitch you.

A major focus of the different types of learning focused on the shortcomings of the current algorithms. I’m not going into each of the different types of learning algorithms; connectionists, evolutionaries, symbolists, Bayesian, anologizers, and self recursive learners. However, many of the models shortcomings fall around Hume’s Problem of Induction in which we can only generalize so far from current observations/information before that information can be falsified. All swans were thought to be white until black swans were found in Australia…. But it seems that it must be this way. We must provide some guidance and generalizations for our current models to work. They key is then that the models must be subjected to the scientific method. Models fail when not tested and tweaked. No models are infallible. Their outputs must be tested and the models modified for better future performance.

This leads to the authors point that computers are just idiot savants. They are very good at limited tasks at this point. They tend to miss generalizations and overfit the data. Feedback and modification is crucial to refining these systems.

The author then concludes with some main points. First, it won’t be man vs. machine. It will be man with knowledge of machines vs. man without knowledge of the machines. I think this is accurate in the near term. I agree with this general premise, but only in the near term. If we do create “the master algorithm” it will be the machine with all of the power…

I do not agree with the author’s second point. He believes that the rise of algorithms and robots will lead to a safer world where human casualties from conflict will go down or be nonexistant. His thoughts are that we are going to have robot on robot fighting only. This seems rediculous to me. There is no reason to believe that robots will battle only other robots or that there will be some sort of mutual determent because of both sides having super weapons.

The final point is that we need to draw from not one type of learner but many, emulating to some extent on what people do. We are not one static type of learner, we shouldn’t expect the master algorithm to have one type of learning to become super intelligent. At the same time, we need to be very humble in what we don’t know. The fact that we seem to have discovered that there are no known physical laws restricting creating a superintelligence or master algorithm means that it will more than likely happen some time in the future if a major catastrophe doesn’t wipe us out first. This is a scary thing. Many smart people are working on what creating the master algorithm might mean. But again, our knowledge is very limited, and I think that like the author most people are far too optimistic about how this may turn out. There are major challenges ahead. Those that are competing in this arms race show no signs of slowing down. More people need to be focused on the crucial issues of ethics, governance, and control. It sounds rather cliche, but life may depend on getting these answers right in advance.

Fashionable Nonsense

Fashionable Nonsense by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont is a refute to postmodernist. It didn’t take much convincing for me to buy the premise. I think that the postmodernist (and those that act as such but are unaware of the term) are one of the biggest threats to intellectual pursuits and truth.

As the authors point out, their aim is not to show that the social sciences are unnecessary, but to point out that a few people use scientism and blatant distortions of science to further their agendas. This is rampant on college campuses throughout America at this time. Professors are being harassed to the point that they can no longer teach. Micro-aggressions (whatever the fuck those are) are being utilized to steer the discussions away from anything these postmodernists don’t want to hear. They are “offended” by everything, to the point that we can no longer talk about biology in a classic context because the terms male and female are supposedly “social constructs”. All of this I believe is complete bullshit.

These aren’t even the authors main points. Hell, I didn’t even finish the book. Once they got into deconstructing specific objections to literary works of specific persons I read a few and called it good. I do that typically with books that repeatedly hammer home the same point. Thanks guys, sold, no need to go further.

The main point of their objections hold without question as far as I’m concerned. You can’t bastardize science and mathematics to feed yourself confirmation bias. You can’t tell me that biology and mathematics are wrong because your offended that it doesn’t fit your worldview. You can’t sensor thought, that is a deep dark hole to go down. It follows logically that if you eliminate some teachings because they are offensive you soon have to eliminate all teachings. That is not a world that I want to live in.

The world is not a kind place. It’s best to recognize that early and remind yourself often. Just because I don’t like something doesn’t mean it isn’t true or contain some form of truth to be recognized. Some things I will never understand or comprehend. That by no means, mean those ideas should be censored, banned, or their proponents harassed. We need to break this trend before we are all living in a backwards world. Perhaps all it will take is handing out copies of Fahrenheit 451. Perhaps too many people skipped reading this as a requirement in high school. Perhaps there is a corollary to Walter Lippmann’s quote “where all men think alike, no one thinks very much”; where no one is allowed to think independently, no one thinks very much… 

Illusions

Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah by Richard Bach was a fun and interesting read. It is also short. I got the recommendation from Scott Adams’ blog. It was on his must read list of persuasion. It was advertised as a book that would open your mind about the world. I am not sure that it changed my fundamental belief system… but it was entertaining non-the-less.

The basic premise is an average man working in a mechanics shop is a messiah on earth much like Jesus. He gathers followers, has to quit his job because of the crowds, leads them and preaches wisdom, and then…quits. He leaves the crowd, goes to pray on his own, gets the go-ahead from God, and abandons his followers. They are stunned and he has vanished.

This is where our protagonist enters. He is a loner that flies customers for $3/ride in his little aircraft in the early 20th century in the Midwest. He is flying one day, spots another pilot, lands and sparks a conversation. He notices that this stranger never needs gas, never gets bugs on his plane, and can perform feats with it that should be impossible. They seemed bound together. He soon learns that the man he has friended is in fact our missing messiah. Not only that, this man claims that he is not special, that this world is all an illusion, and we can live in multiple realities at once. Life here is not real life, all illusions. He even has a handy little handbook for messiahs that he passes along to our man that happens to open to a passage the man needs every time it flips open. Convenient right?

What he soon learns is that our messiah isn’t the only messiah, in fact, there are a shit ton of these dudes. They are the enlightened ones that have realized that world is nothing more than illusions and it can be modified with mere thought and understanding. Add to that, our messiah and our protagonist are directly intertwined and our man just doesn’t remember. He also happens to be a messiah. He learns the art rather quickly and pretty soon we’re +1 at the messiah table.

It was fun to think of the world as completely malleable. That you can walk on water and swim in the earth. That you can suspend wrenches in the sky. That you could heal the sick. If only you realized that this world is not real and the other participants are all part of the illusion. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, but it was far from profound. I don’t feel like I got a lot of valuable lessons from it.

But looking at it from the perspective of persuasion it is always great to remember that the world is subjective. No one sees the world they way you do. It’s easy to forget this. Your world view is shaped by your unique experiences, and even your current mood. Each one of us is a special little snowflake. And maybe that is the point, my world is an illusion compared to your view of reality. You can create other people’s realities by guiding thoughts and situations. In that sense the book is spot on. If you’re goal is to be persuasive, you must always remember that people’s beliefs and outlooks are malleable and you can use that to your advantage. If you want proof no need to look further than our current political situation/climate. It’s true that facts don’t matter. Facts are not what shape our worlds.

The Tao of Charlie Munger

The Tao of Charlie Munger by David Clark is a collection of quotes from Charlie Munger. David elaborates on each one and puts in what he thinks is intended by the quote or what Charlie was driving at. Overall he does a very good job. I would normally find the ones that I like best and do my own interpretation, but there are just far too many.  I would essentially be transcribing the entire book. Charlie’s knowledge is outstanding and I have heard all of these quotes before. As with all things Charlie Munger this will be something that I revisit many times. Never want to go too long without getting a dose of reality from Charlie.

Rules for Radicals

I feel like I read this book at the wrong time in my life. It was an audiobook and I was traveling so I pushed my way through. Normally I would have probably have put down this book down. It’s not that I didn’t see the value in the book (I have a few notes below), it’s just that it didn’t speak to me the way it may have when I was in college. It will be one I re-visit later in life.

Here are my main take aways from the text (nothing here is quoted directly from the text, just notes I jotted):

Dogma is the enemy of freedom. — I agree with this completely. Charlie Munger states that the human mind is a lot like the human egg. Once one idea gets in it shuts down to new ideas much like the human egg once fertilized. The more you shout something out, the more you pound it in. If you are not open to new ideas, you are stuck. Forever looking to defense your feelings. Never searching for truth, only confirmation.

Leaders and organizers need to fight with ideas and not bombs. — You’ll never get true compliance and buy in if you have to strong arm people into following you. It is more important to persuade them to believe and follow you. If you don’t have an ideological following, you’ll never have a real following. Just a mass of people that are looking for the next thing to come along or a chance to take the helm of leadership.

Things are done for the common good and than for the common man’s greed. — It seems that this is true of a lot of the laws and policies that are enacted. Things are done at face value to benefit the whole. Everyone supposedly with good intentions. But once opportunity is seen in any well meaning system someone with be there game it to their advantage. Saying you want what’s best for society falls into the category of virtue signaling in my opinion. It’s a lot easier say that you want what’s best for society when your sacrifice is superficial.

Passive resistance doesn’t work against totalitarian regimes. — Sit ins work well in North Korea? Sometimes you need to fight fire with fire. A grizzly bear doesn’t listen to reasoning.

Those without power appeal to morality or a higher power. — It can often be that an argument in regards to “fairness” or “God’s will” is the only weapon many have in fighting the entrenched status quo. As stated before you need people to buy into what you are fighting for or you will have no real base. But once the minority gets into power they are often quick to resort to weapons and justifications for retaining that power. It’s remarkable how quickly one becomes the other.

It depends on who’s communist they are… — I find this a very interesting take on framing. It is easy to find justification to support those who are supporting you no matter the back story of your cheerleader. Conversely, it’s real easy to find flaws in those that we see as opposing. It’s important to remain objective no matter who you are dealing with.

The organizer knows that the only thing guaranteed is change. He/She find power for leaders to use. — To be a great leader or organizer you must be open and understanding that life and our interactions are in a constant flow. Being static will get you in the unemployment line real quick. The most effective companies and people are ones that can quickly recognize the paradigm shifts and figure out how their agenda fits into the new dynamic.

Organizer must be good at communicating. They must find a bond with those they are trying to persuade/organize. — The best communicators and sales people are able to quickly find something that bonds you together. Most effective is relying on the “liking principle”, people tend to be very receptive to those that they like. The most successful car salesman of all time had a simple tactic. He made sure his clients trusted and liked him. He sent everyone he met at that dealership a card at Christmas letting them know that he not only remembered them, but liked them. It feels good to be liked and it’s easy to return that kindness, you almost feel compelled to…. Finding a bond is unique to every situation, but you can always get a good start on it by getting someone to like you first.

Organizers use questions phrased as “what do you think we should do here…?” or “it seems like you have an idea in regards to ‘x’…” to open communication. This is done with a little bit of leading to make people feel like it’s their idea. — This goes a long way. I just recently finished Chris Voss’ book Never Split the Difference which states the effectiveness of this type of framing. Framing your questions to engage the person/people you are working with is a very powerful tool. Before you open your mouth, be sure you are ready to actively listen and that you have formulated your question to get the most out of the answer.

A good tactic is one people enjoy deploying. — This again goes into buy-in of your idea or agenda. You need it to sound exciting and beneficial. If people are bought in, they will be happy to get out and sing its praises. You need to find how to get a lollapoluza effect from your idea. You need people willing to support, state that they support it eagerly and openly, get them to commit something personal (skin in the game), and provide social proof that their peers are bought in as well.

Large crowds can be the biggest disrupter. — It’s easy to say no to an individual, its somewhat easy to tell ten people to get the hell off your lawn. But when you have hundreds or thousands of people standing on your doorstep or swamping your website with attacks it is almost impossible to defend. Need to be wary of small but powerful groups, they can rally into large ones. Keep customers happy so that you don’t revolt. As of today, H&M made a horrible PR gaff (I’ll call it that because that is the Oscam razor’s theory), and they had riots at their stores in South Africa. They had to close them all. Mobs move quick, you need to recognize the signs of trouble and get out in front of it. The best thing you can do is to note your faults straight out, take the teeth out of the attack, show a plan for improvement/remedy and overstate your apologies. This tactic worked great for Buffet (AIG) and Jobs (antenna issue). Apologize, re-frame, and attack the problem.

Lots of good anecdotes in there, but as I mentioned, I would’ve gotten a lot more from this at different time in my life.

 

Is The Internet Selling You Confirmation Bias? My Review of Weapons of Math Destruction

“Sometimes I think you have to march right in and demand your rights, even if you don’t know what your rights are, or who the person is you’re talking to. Then on the way out, slam the door. – Deep Thoughts (Saturday Night Live)” — Jack Handy

I feel like this quote from Jack Handy sums up how I feel after finishing Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O’Neil. I want my privacy back from the internet, I want to know that I am not being constantly directed and manipulated when on the internet. I know that is not possible. I’d just be walking in demanding something impossible from people that don’t care who I am.

I always thought that I understood the manipulation that happens to folks on the internet. But I feel like I underestimated just how strong of an impact it has on people’s actions and beliefs. I wonder how much of what I believe are my convictions and how many of these things have been slowly refined by algorithms? The Chinese government did very well manipulating POWs during the Korean War when they captured enemy combatants. They did not torture them. They got them to make little concessions day after day. They would get them to write down something like “I understand that there may be things America should do differently” or “I know the President of the United States may have some flaws”. They would then get one of the prisoners to stand up and recite what they had written. All very public expressions that invoke a lot of psychological pressure on the prisoners without them realizing, something Charlie Munger would call a lollapoluza effect. The messages would change over time to become more anti-American and pro-Chinese. And this worked to a very serious degree. Extremely effective. Effective to the point that and the end of the war, once prisoners were to be exchanged, some of the Americans refused to come home. Permanently converted to the Chinese way of thinking. It appears that many large internet companies and political campaigns understand this fact very well. Like I mentioned, I wonder how much of what I believe are my own convictions and how many of these things have been slowly refined by algorithms?

I jumped ahead a bit here. Let me summarize the book as succulently as I can: models (or algorithms) are used for many things, they can be good or bad, if they’re bad the author considers them Weapons of Math Destruction (WMDs). Models that can’t be constantly tweaked and modified produce outputs with unintended consequences. Models produce unintended consequences when not properly understood and applied. Opaque models are bad. Society (the author pushes for the government) should focus on what the effect of what these models are, require modification or elimination of models that are discriminatory, and to only use these models when the short comings are fully known.

A better summary is “All models are wrong, some are useful.” – George Box. Also you should check out Farnam Street’s article related to this here. ->

https://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2017/06/all-models-are-wrong/

So is the internet selling you confirmation bias? This is definitely something I thought a lot about while reading this book. It seems that those that control your consumption on the internet want to and are doing both, modifying behavior and selling you confirmation bias. They focus on keeping you on the site as long as possible. That means learning what you like and dislike, and modifying what you’re shown to keep you from looking away. You only see more of what you liked in the past. This is another very powerful psychological tool that is being wielded against society and most people have little idea and/or care.

The less informed out there are being taken advantage of the most. Which is typical. It seems ole John Wayne was right when he said “Life’s hard, it’s even harder when you’re stupid”. Companies use internet searches for things like food stamps as opportunities to target people for for-profit colleges. Using their troubled times to try and sell them an over-priced high school diploma when they are just searching for anything better than their current situation. It’s pretty fucked up….

But the poor and uniformed are in no way the only ones being led around the arena. I just bought a shirt today that Instagram thought I would like… I do like it, well I think I do…

It’s scary to me that we are all being sorted by our behavior on the internet. I agree with the author, this type of system will segregate society. It will more than likely push divides further, whether that is culturally or politically. The dangers should be known, or at least advertised. Facebook shouldn’t prioritize some of the content you see from your friends and not show you some from others. You don’t know how you’re sorted. That’s the part that bothers me. Which way am I being persuaded? What if a few searches modify the content I am receiving and I get down a path that turns out negative in relation to my goals? How will this affect my kids’ values?

Maybe this is all just an argument for a blockchain based internet…..

That doesn’t solve the problem of math being used to deceive investors and causing a financial crisis…

The traveling charlatans certainly aren’t a thing of the past. They just now have a much wider reach from their desk. And they certainly are able to discern a lot more about you than some slick stranger wondering into town.

The Nordic Theory of Everything?

“I hope if dogs take over the world, and they choose a king, they don’t just go by size, because I bet there are some Chihuahuas with some good ideas.”— Jack Handy

Got a little jump start on the first book of 2018, and no I don’t usually finish books in a day…

The first one I tackled was The Nordic Theory of Everything – In Search of a Better Life by Anu Partanen. Not a book I would have normally picked out on my own, but someone on Twitter gave it a nod so I thought what the hell….

I have long understood that many of the Nordic countries are rated the near the top on the “happiness indicators” (whatever that means) and the book looks to explain why every thing is so great up there in the arctic and how America should adapt its policies to be more like those happy, suicide prone Northern folk.

The book is a lot of commentary comparing the life of the writer in the two countries. She describes her love of certain aspects of America but hates the anxiety and insecurity of it. Reminiscing fondly of all the good things in her native country. It has the “look at what we Northerners do, it’s great, why don’t you just do that” sort of feel.  There is free child care, why don’t you do that in America? It makes families happier and stronger. Agreed.  Easier said than done. There is free and equal education and all of our teachers have high level degrees, why don’t you do that in America? It takes pressure off of parents and doesn’t put children from poorer families at a disadvantage. Agreed. Easier said than done. There is (nearly) free healthcare, why don’t you do that in America? It reduces anxiety, stress on families, and provides an overall better quality of life because people will be treated as needed and not as a last resort. Agreed. Easier said than done.

Healthcare in America has been an issue for a long time. Education discrepancies and the rising cost of college tuition have been issues for a long time. America is certainly not perfect and there are many things that can be learned and implemented from the Nordic way of doing things, but listing the issues without any sort of thoughts on how to adapt them to a country as large and diverse as America does as much good as me writing a book on how to train your dog to piss in the toilet with no instructions. Sure it’s a good idea, but it’s up to you to figure out how to do it….

This is not to say that these Chihuahua states of the Nordic don’t have good ideas. There is still lots to take away from the ideas presented. The main theme of the book revolves around the “Nordic theory of love”. This appears to be a true concern for their fellow citizens without the patronizing aspect of the nanny society. It seems a stark contrast to what many in America assume is basically a socialist society. The “Nordic theory of love” seems more like an arm’s length affection. People are expected to go out on their own and be self reliant. It encourages them to lead their own lives and provide for their own interests. This something I feel is badly lacking in America today. But it goes even further; it is not a parent’s responsibility to provide for their children after they reach the age of maturity. It’s not an adult’s responsibility to care for their elderly parents. Lifting a huge burden that many American’s face. However, they have a safety net in the government that is more supportive and robust to enable it.

There is also a lot of attention paid to how to run a more efficient government, much is wasted and squandered each year in all aspects of American government. It seems that the people of the North are better at thinking choices through and at looking at second and third order consequences of their decisions and not on the next election. They focus on the importance of human capital and what it takes to keep and maintain a healthy and productive workforce. For example, the idea that long term leave for family care (which they get a ton of!) is easier for employers to deal with than short or medium term leave. Which passes the eye test for sure. I would much rather have someone in a position that they are going to be responsible for, for a year than someone just going through the motions and half assing it for six weeks. Certainly better for both parents and baby as well.

All in all, I feel that there is some good in the ideas of the book but it seemed to miss the mark. The idea of just having America follow the Nordic model glosses over the extreme challenges of scale and implementation. The book would have better served to focus more on the idea of small community focused government with how to implement her desired changes at a local level. At one point it compares the sizes of the Nordic countries to the average American state. This is where the focus should have been and stayed.

Why Deep Thoughts…

“Whenever you read a good book, it’s like the author is right there, in the room talking to you, which is why I don’t like to read good books.” — Jack Handy

 

In case anyone ever stumbles across this random collection of thoughts I wanted to preface that this is written solely for myself with no intention of pleasing or persuading any audience.

I read a lot of books. I love books. I start many in a given year, finish most, scan some, and discard a few that are either bullshit or not quite my particular brand of vodka…. Going through a lot of books is very rewarding and I feel that my life has benefitted greatly from vigorous reading. It has been said by many great persons that books enable you to “borrow someone else’s brain” or “stand on the shoulders of giants” (not sure who to attribute either of those quotes to…) they are right. As Charlie Munger says; “In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time – none, zero.”

Reading is daunting to many people. The biggest reason for not reading I hear from many of my friends is that they simply don’t have the time. That is completely understandable. Life is busy. But like all things it is a matter of prioritization and habit. Once your in the habit it is very hard to stop. My issues lay elsewhere.

I find that I end up forgetting or losing track of some important topics or highlights from the material. For a long time I believed that it was impossible to comprehend all of the material and store it for a long time. I figured if it was important enough I would remember it, and if I didn’t than it must not have been that important. A very naive way to think I have to admit. But after running across topics multiple times, I assumed there had to be a better way for me to retain and utilize more of what I consume. So I set out in search of a way to better categorize and reference my reading.

It didn’t take long to find that many other people have struggled and felt the same way I did; surprise, surprise… I ran across a couple of folks that put it very succinctly for me, Ryan Holiday and Shane Parrish. I respect them and they both learned that one of the most important aspects of reading is writing. So therefore, in order to further my understanding and comprehension of the material I will be putting my thoughts on each book I read on here as a way to look back and reference as necessary.

In addition to book notes/reviews I will also be writing whatever catches my fancy so to speak. This is an open journal and hopefully an informative and therapeutic way to enable my growth as an individual. I’m looking forward to it.