Gut assement glitches

We like to think that we are experts at sizing people up.  On the basis of brief encounters we size people up.

 

But at least in the cases were people know they are being assessed, and thus can put on their social face, the numbers don't look real good.

 

This column will change your life: gut feelings

Oliver Burkeman, The Guardian, 17 January 2014 (hat tip: MR)

"We have a deep-seated need to feel that we can judge character," Jason Dana, of Yale University, told the Boston Globe recently. But many studies suggest we can't – and a new paper co-authored by Dana is especially damning. He looked at "unstructured interviews", the free-wheeling kind of interview that's usually crucial to getting a job. Participants were asked to predict the academic performance of two college students: in one case, they were given data on the student's past achievements, age etc; in the other, they got the data, plus a chance to interview the student. Consistently, interviewing led to less accurate predictions. The students who looked best "on paper" really were. Of course, you might have other reasons for wanting to see how someone handles themselves in conversation, but for forecasting performance, gut feel got in the way.

Technically, the problem with unstructured interviews (or dates) isn't that they're insufficiently informative. It's that they're too informative. Bombarded by data, we seek refuge in "sensemaking", clinging to stories that seem to render things clear. But those stories might include racist or sexist stereotypes about who's good at what. Or they might be the seductive stories of candidates skilled at interviews, yet rubbish at the job itself. "Because of sensemaking," the researchers write, "interviewers are likely to feel they are getting useful information from unstructured interviews, even when they are useless." Settling on a coherent story feels good, but that doesn't mean it's accurate.

The one question that they note a correlation, "Do you like beer?" to first date sex, reminds me of the statistic that one of the best predictors of early sex by woman is that they smoke cigarettes. One doesn't exactly lead to the other, but certain groupings of non-random behavior, overwhelm the random portions.

Feral Cities

 There are all sorts of ways for civilization to end.  They need not be global, nor fast.

Feral Cities (pdf)
Richard Norton, Naval War College Review, 2003

Imagine a great metropolis covering hundreds of square miles. Once a vital component in a national economy, this sprawling urban environment is now a vast collection of blighted buildings, an immense petri dish of both ancient and new diseases, a territory where the rule of law has long been replaced by near anarchy in which the only security available is that which is attained through brute power.  Such cities have been routinely imagined in apocalyptic movies and in certain science-fiction genres, where they are often portrayed as gigantic versions of T. S. Eliot’s Rat’s Alley.. Yet this city would still be globally connected. It would possess at least a modicum of commercial linkages, and some of its inhabitants would have access to the worlds most modern communication and computing technologies. It would, in effect, be a feral city.

I saw this quote in David Kilcullen's Out of the Mountains.  As he notes, That this kind of city " has no essential services or social safety net. Human security becomes a matter of individual initiative-conflict entrepreneurs and community militias emerge, Mad Max style.

Combative moves from chess

This is a nice enough piece on World Chess Champion, Magnus Carlson who hails from Scotland.

It notes the he is a particularly nettlesome foe, and I thought that the idea of being a nettlesome foe seemed like a pretty good idea to me.  Given the dueling nature of chess, it is not surprising that some of the moves sound rather militaristic in tone.

The nettlesome World Champion
Jonathan Rowson, The Herald (Scotland), 29 December 2013 (hat tip: MR)

1. Avoid errors yourself
2. Play relatively quickly
3. See complexity where others assume simplicity.
4. Develop exquisite timing for when to change the nature of the position.
5. Navigate towards positions where there are no obvious moves.
6. Believe in your opponent's greater and ultimate fallibility.
7. Keep going relentlessly.
8. Be ever ready to pounce.
9. Kill them without mercy.
10. Smile for the cameras.

Hmmm... Oh, well.  Not exactly an easy set of advise to follow: for chess or life in general.   The general concept of being relentless and seizing on moments of opportunity are probably reasonable.  Being remorseless in combat is usually not too hard; most people are too scared to do otherwise once they get going.

 

But, all and all, not a universally transferable list.

Robot metal bands

Well we have had virtual girlfriends, and robot waitresses, so why not robot musicians.

Apparently speed metal met the human limitation, and went beyond:

In Speed Metal, Fastest Drummers Take a Beating
Neil Shah, Wall Street Journal, 29 December 2013

When new technologies arrived, metal drumming standards entered the realm of the physically impossible. Today, many bands write songs using computers without even rehearsing them. When an English band recently came to Mr. Mynett's studio, "none of the musicians could play the parts they'd written," he said.'... Paradoxically, to make drum tracks sound more human, metal producers deliberately introduce mistakes into their own programming. "They cover it up," Mr. Mynett says. "The idea is to make people think the virtuoso is real."

This sleight of hand can cause embarrassing missteps live, but bands often rely on some computer drum tracks for concerts, too—especially if performances are recorded for a live album, says producer Russ Russell, 44, from Northamptonshire, in central England. "There are some 'live' albums where there's not that much 'live' on it."

 

Too funny. Where is Sarah Conner when we need her?

 

Apparently, a fuller version of the idea has already been explored.

Robot Rock (from video here)