Category Archives: thoughts

quotes, thoughts

Changing Your Mind is not Indecisiveness

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Sorting through some old work papers the other day I came across an item which was obviously originally posted on a forum somewhere. Sadly I hadn’t noted the source or the author. However reading it struck a chord so here is a (slightly edited) version, with apologies to whoever the original author was!

There is an interesting corollary to the “fog of war” which I [the original author] came across in Robert Cialdini’s Influence.

In a chapter on “Commitment and Consistency” he quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson:

A foolish consistency is the Hobgoblin of little minds.
Usually we think consistency is a good thing, but the foolish rigid variety is not. Now, automatic consistency is really useful most of the time, since we often need to be able to behave in appropriate ways without thinking. A dilemma. And the only way out is to know when such consistency is likely to lead to poor choice. Cialdini says there are two separate signals to help tip us off.

The first occurs in the pit of our stomach when we realize we are trapped in to complying with something we know we didn’t want to do. It’s probably happened to you a hundred times. Cialdini recounts his experience with a young woman carrying a clipboard who knocked on his front door. She tells him she’s conducting a survey. And he, wanting to make a favourable impression on the young woman, stretched the truth in his answers to her “survey” questions. Then using his answers against him, she tells him that she “can save him up to 1200 dollars” if he joins the club membership she is selling. “Surely someone as socially vigorous as yourself would want to take advantage of the tremendous savings our company can offer on all the things you’ve already told me you do!” she says. And he, feeling trapped, feels his stomach tighten. He actually complied with her request although he defends himself saying that it was before he started his study of influence.

The second is not so clear. It’s in your “heart of hearts” and can be heard in answering the tricky question: “Knowing what I know now, if I could go back in time, would I have made the same choice?” Sometimes circumstances change, and with those changes, is your original decision still valid? Changing your mind or acting inconsistently with your previous actions is not indecisiveness. If the answer to the knowing-what-I-know-now question is “No” then reversing or changing your position is the responsible thing to do. This strategy can help tremendously when re-evaluating those sunk cost decisions. Especially for revisiting decisions to continue with projects that may no longer be viable.

I try not to tie my ego to my original position, and remember that it’s okay to change my mind.

Moral: know when to change your mind!

personal, quotes, thoughts

Where Am I?

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Here, I guess …

There’s a trick to the ‘graceful exit’.  It begins with the vision to recognize when a job, a life stage, or a relationship is over and let it go.  It means leaving what’s over without denying its validity or its past importance to our lives.  It involves a sense of future, a belief that every exit line is an entry, that we are moving up, rather than out.

[Ellen Goodman]

books, food+drink, medical, nudism, personal, photography, pleasures, quotes, science, thoughts

Outlook for 2010

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Jilly over at jillysheep has prompted me to think about what I might want to achieve in 2010. This is not something I normally do, as I have always been content to drift with the tide and see what washes up.

But in 2010 I would like to:

  1. Win the lottery jackpot (minimum £2m)
  2. Lose 50 kilos (I keep telling you I’m hugely overweight)
  3. Do all the cooking (like I used to)
  4. Get the bathroom rebuilt (probably requires as a prerequisite)
  5. Get the house rewired (also requires as a prerequisite)
  6. Get the whole house tidy, uncluttered and clean – and keep it that way
  7. Get the two-thirds of the house which badly needs it redecorated (another that requires as a prerequisite)
  8. Go on at least three 2-week holidays, one railway-based, one to Europe and one naturist in the sun
  9. Travel from Thurso to Penzance by train.
  10. Have a good sunny summer and be able to walk skyclad all summer around my garden

That list was a joke! Yes, I would like to do all those things but the chances of achieving them are at best 1 in 14 million (ie. the chance of winning the lottery at any one attempt. If I win the lottery (odds over the year probably 300 in 14 million) all except , and #10 become relatively easy.

OK, so let’s be realistic. What do I stand some chance of achieving?

  1. Lose 15 kilos
  2. Get out to the shops (even the dreaded supermarket) at least once a week (ought to be easy now I’m retired)
  3. Cook 3 meals a week
  4. Go out to take photographs at least once a week (also should be easy)
  5. Write 2 weblog posts a week
  6. Get the heating fixed (like Jilly, we have an annoying intermittent and unsolved problem)
  7. Grow a year’s supply of chillies – on the study windowsill (given that we use a lot of chillies and said windowsill space is limited this will need a very prolific variety)
  8. Get my Anthony Powell Society work up to date, and keep it that way
  9. Get the sitting room and dining rooms properly tidy and inhabitable
  10. Rejuvenate my fish tanks
  11. Go away on holiday for 2 weeks
  12. Make some major progress on my family history (yes that’s vague; first I have to take stock of what I’ve got)

And if I actually manage to achieve half of that lot I should be satisfied.

I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions – that’s just setting oneself up to fail, because they are always so unrealistic – so I’m not going to start this year and I’m not even going to commit to trying to achieve any of the above. They are what I would like to achieve. It’s a “wants list”, not a “must achieve or else list”. One reason I took early retirement was to get away from the incessant round of unachievable “must achieve or else” objectives. That way come madness and depression. 2010 is about relaxing and finding a life again.

Happy New Year to everyone!
Please don’t go out celebrating and get frostbite. 🙂

books, current affairs, memes, natural history, personal, photography, thoughts

2009 Meme


2009 Meme, originally uploaded by kcm76.

This week’s Flickr meme is: For this coming New Year how about 12 pictures, one for each month of the old year (ie. 2009) to represent something about what happened to you that month. Here is my year in 12 pictures.

January: A new project boss; there were no prisoners taken
February: Snow
March: Daffodils; there’s hope at last
April: Spring blossom
May: Anthony Powell Society Collage Event
June: Attended the Garter Service at Windsor, thanks to our friend Richmond Herald
July: The company pension crisis broke, which has led me to early retirement from 5 January 2010
August: Was taken up with preparations for the conference and writing my conference paper
September: While in Washington DC for the Anthony Powell Conference we celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary — eeekkkkk!
October: Anthony Powell Society AGM at which Patric Dickinson (3rd from left in this old photo) spoke interestingly about Dorothy Varda
November: Beaujolais Nouveau est arrivée; an antidepressant is definitely required
December: More snow coincides with my last real working day
All in all an interesting year but a demanding and, at times, a stressful one.

As always the photographs are not mine (except for 3, 5, 10, 11 which are mine) so please click on individual links below to see each artist/photostream. This mosaic is for a group called My Meme, where each week there is a different theme and normally 12 questions to send you out on a hunt to discover photos to fit your meme. It gives you a chance to see and admire other great photographers’ work out there on Flickr.

1. Umm, Jack Hanna sure tastes good !, 2. Snow in the Chilterns, 3. Daffs, 4. Spring in Pink, 5. Power Collage, 6. Img0051768, 7. House of Cards, 8. Balloons just waiting to be blown up, 9. Flower Candy, 10. AP Soc Members at Wysall, 11. Anti-Depressant, 12. gloom, with more sheep

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys

beliefs, quotes, thoughts

Welcome Yule!

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Today, 21 December, is Yule, the Germanic peoples’ mid-winter festival held on the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year – and doesn’t it feel like it this year with snow falling, as I type, across much of the UK. Wikipedia has a reasonable summary of the origins of Yule – there are others here and here – so I won’t repeat them except to say that like most pre-Christian festivals it was a time of feasting – indeed in many traditions it was the major feast of the year. And like many such events it was also a health and fertility rite which has descended to us in the form of Wassail, only on this occasion it is predicated around rebirth – the rebirth of the sun from it’s winter retreat and thus hope for the year to come.

Most religions have their mid-winter festival of rebirth and or light. Light to lighten the darkness of winter and celebrate the rebirth of the sun, the giver of life. Hence the bonfire traditions, the burning of the Yule log (yes, originally a big log, not a chocolate cake!), the Scandinavian feast of St Lucia, etc. So the old pre-Christian Yule has become assimilated by the Christian church, along with the Roman Saturnalia, St Lucia and New Year to make their feast of Christmas.

So in concelebration with our wise, pagan forebears I wish you all

God Jul and wæs hæil
current affairs, personal, thoughts

End of an Era

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The time has come for this long-in-the-tooth rat to abandon the good ship SS Work. I’ve been offered, and accepted, early retirement. It’s been in the offing for some while but has been confirmed only in the last couple of weeks. I leave officially on 5 January 2010, but my last full working day will likely be Friday 18 December, followed by a couple of part-days the following week to complete handovers etc.

This opportunity, brought about by the upcoming demise of our final salary pension scheme, is a bonus and the push I needed. I had always planned to retire around now, and certainly no later than age 60, so this is one of the few things in life so far I have achieved more or less as planned. (In fact I’ve planned very little in my life, being content to drift into whatever has been available; one reason I’ve not made it higher up the various ladders.) There’s lots else I want to do while I’m still young enough (and vaguely fit enough) to be able to. Have no fear, I shall certainly not be idle in my retirement.

33 years with one company is a long time. I’ve learnt a lot, had many enjoyable times and worked with many excellent people. There have, of course, also been some not so good times and some very stressful times; the last year or so has been an especially bumpy ride, although ultimately a successful one. I look back not in anger but more in sadness at the passing of an era, for my infamy shall precede me no more.

So roll on Christmas and a new beginning. Although it’s what I want, it’s actually quite scary!

current affairs, science, thoughts

Thought Provoking Scientists

The current issue of Scientific American contains the usual thought provoking features from its four regular, heavyweight opinion writers. Here is a taster of each of their articles:

First, Jeffrey Sachs on the challenges of tackling birth control and food production in tandem.

The green revolution that made grain production soar gave humanity some breathing space, but the continuing rise in population and demand for meat production is exhausting that buffer. The father of the green revolution, Norman Borlaug … made exactly this point in 1970 when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize: “There can be no permanent progress in the battle against hunger until the agencies that fight for increased food production and those that fight for population control unite in a common effort.”

It is not enough to produce more food; we must also simultaneously stabilize the global population and reduce the ecological consequences of food production – a triple challenge.

Next, Michael Shermer on the psychological differences between conservatives and liberals.

[Jonathan] Haidt [psychologist; University of Maryland] proposes that the foundations of our sense of right and wrong rest within “five innate and universally available psychological systems” that might be summarized as follows:
1. Harm/care …
2. Fairness/reciprocity …
3. Ingroup/loyalty …
4. Authority/respect …
5. Purity/sanctity …

Self-reported liberals are high on 1 and 2 … but are low on 3, 4 and 5 … whereas self-reported conservatives are roughly equal on all five dimensions, although they place slightly less emphasis on 1 and 2 than liberals do.

Instead of viewing the left and the right as either inherently correct or wrong, a more scientific approach is to recognize that liberals and conservatives emphasize different moral values.

Thirdly, Lawrence Krauss on filtering out bias in news reporting.

I reflected on something I had written a dozen years ago, in one of my first published commentaries:

“The increasingly blatant nature of the nonsense uttered with impunity in public discourse is chilling. Our democratic society is imperiled as much by this as any other single threat, regardless of whether the origins of the nonsense are religious fanaticism, simple ignorance or personal gain.”

As I listen to the manifest nonsense that has been promulgated by the likes of right-wing fanatic radio hosts and moronic ex-governors in response to the effort to bring the US into alignment with other industrial countries in providing reasonable and affordable health care for all its citizens, it seems that things have only gotten worse in the years since I first wrote those words …

I worry for the future of our democracy if a combination of a free press and democratically elected leaders cannot together somehow more effectively defend empirical reality against the onslaught of ideology and fanaticism.

And finally the always slightly off-the-wall, zen-like Steve Mirsky on knuckle-cracking research.

Most known knuckle crackers have probably been told by some expert – whose advice very likely began, “I’m not a doctor, but …” – that the behavior would lead to arthritis …

“For 50 years, [Dr Donald Unger] cracked the knuckles of his left hand at least twice a day, leaving those on the right as a control …

Finally, after five decades, Unger analyzed his data set: “There was no arthritis in either hand, and no apparent differences between the two hands.” He concluded that “there is no apparent relationship between knuckle cracking and the subsequent development of arthritis of the fingers.” Evidence for whether the doctor himself was cracked may be that he traveled all the way from his California home to Harvard University to pick up his Ig Nobel Prize [in Medicine awarded in 2009] in person.

The good thing about all of this is that these guys are working thinkers and are tackling some really knotty issues; moreover they write clear and concise single page articles such that you come away not just understanding the issue but being able to form your own opinion, whether with or against the writer’s standpoint. We need more people like these guys: clear concise communicators with the vision to see the issues and the brain-power to tackle them head-on without recourse to vested interests and politics. More power to Scientific American for allowing them this freedom.

beliefs, current affairs, freedom of speech, medical, nudism, personal, science, sexuality, thoughts

Taboo!

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I’ve been thinking recently about our taboos. What I find curious is where we individually draw the boundary lines between what’s acceptable, what’s unacceptable and what falls in the grey area between. This is partly because some of my views are diametrically opposed to the norms of our society, but also because as a society, and as a collection of individuals, we seem to be sleep-walking into far too many important decisions.

We can probably all agree on a common set of things we think should be outlawed: child abuse, female circumcision, rape, gratuitous animal cruelty. And a set of things which are (generally) OK: sweets, alcohol, blood transfusions, prison for offenders. Although I know there are people who will abhor even these.

Most people would not discuss – and are not comfortable with – pornography, nudity, sex, bodily functions, incest or death. And then of course there are things which are for many on the borderline: animal cruelty for food (aka. abattoirs), abortion, stem cell research.

But this is not where I, personally, would draw the line. For me there is no problem with pornography, sex, nudity, bodily functions and I think even death (it is after all an inevitable consequence of life, at least as we know it). Incest I would say is borderline at worst and under some circumstances OK – why should a brother and sister not have a loving sexual relationship if they wish, as long as they remain aware of the possible dangers.

For me – and I stress this is just my personal opinion – there are far more important things to worry about and which I find at best questionable and at worst objectionable; some I would probably class as obscene – not a word I use lightly or often. The above list of common taboos is a good start to this list with most of them, at least some of the time, being in the obscene category.

However my questionable or unacceptable list contains other things most people find OK: IVF, male circumcision, genetic modification, airport expansion, a federal Europe, positive discrimination, religion, capital punishment, cosmetic surgery (for the sake of personal vanity rather than as a real medical necessity). And my jury is still out on stem cell research.

What I find interesting about this is not that I have different opinions (I’m an eccentric; I expect to have my own, different opinions) but that so few people appear to do likewise.

Society’s taboos, taken as a whole, are essentially the aggregate set of beliefs the majority of individuals find abhorrent – at least as enacted by the great and the good we elect to speak on our behalf and make law (politicians, religious leaders, etc.). It is only by people with differing opinions questioning and challenging this status quo which eventually results in the shift of the agreed set of taboos. Such is how we make progress.

All of this has so far left aside the more personal things. Do you have to be totally private, behind a locked door, in the bathroom or bedroom? Why is sex with the light on such a no-no? Are you OK with sleeping in the nude? As many will realise by now I am pretty open. We’re comfortable with social nudity – indeed any nudity. We both sleep au naturel and prefer it that way. Doors are never shut (except possibly to exclude the cats, and even that is rare). We actively dislike net curtains. We share the bathroom. In fact I think the only thing I have any possible hang-ups about is someone watching me wipe my arse – and even that isn’t a discomforting as it used to be. I was also wary of seeing my late father’s ileostomy – I felt this was intruding too far onto something private to him, although it didn’t seem to worry him; and let’s be fair it is not the most tasteful of things. Why I felt like this I don’t know; it surprised me. Indeed having been brought up to be slightly bohemian, think for myself and have my own opinions, I find it rather odd that I have any taboos at all.

As one of your “working thinkers” (to quote Douglas Adams) what I find distressing is that the majority of people don’t think about such things. There was a research finding a few years ago, which I now cannot place, that found 5% of people are unable to think; 5% of people can think and do so; the remaining 90% of people can think but just don’t. Even sadder is that many of this 90% are content to be told what they think by others, and that means mostly the tabloid press, politicians (who usually seem to have a vested interest) and religious bigots – plus a few cranky academics and do-gooders who manage to get “air time”. But then, despite the fuss some of this “silent majority” make, they probably don’t actually much care as long as someone keeps them in the credit card debt they’ve become attuned to.

Come on guys, wake up at the back! If you want things to get better you need to engage your brains and think through the consequences of your (our) actions. Think about the long term consequences of IVF, air travel, stem cell research. Use what brain cells you have; engage in dialogue with other people. Nobody asks that you are high-powered philosophical thinkers, just that you think as best you can about what is right and make up your own mind. If you then decide you’re happy with the consequences of these things, that’s fine. If you’re not, then you need to be heard. Doing nothing leaves those who do think to fight it out with those with vested interests – and the outcome may well not be the right one – or the one you actually want, whatever that is.