Mob Mentality 2

The Asian Hospital and Medical Center enjoys a reputation as one of the better Philippine hospitals. While I'm sure they have some of the best doctors around, I do have to wonder whether any of them got good grades in elementary English, if their signages are anything to go by:

No kidding folks: a hospital that indicates where the "MOB" loading/unloading area is, not to mention the "MOB" entrance. I had to do a double take when I saw these myself. Was the hospital inviting disgruntled patients to a protest at its very doorstep?

Of course it isn't. "MOB" in this instance refers to the hospital's Medical Office Building, which is where the doctors' offices are located.

No matter how you look at it, though, clearly someone didn't think through the nomenclature and its resulting acronym. Then again, doctors have never been known for their penmanship, so there might just be more to this. Sarcastic conspiracy theories aside, this is one case of signage malpractice no matter how you look at it -- especially if you look at it out of context!

Better Safe than Sorry

When in doubt, we run to others with our concerns.

If you look at it, a lot of the time we do so just for peace of mind. "Better safe than sorry," we say, because experience, expertise, and authority must count for something.

Which it does, albeit in those instances where it's really needed. It's dangerous to self-diagnose and self-medicate. It's good to seek guidance from those with the moral authority to give it. And it's often helpful to consult those whose judgment we trust.

Yet there are times when we turn to others unnecessarily. Hypochondriacs are made, not born. Weigh the implications of a decision too much and you'll end up in analysis paralysis. And while it wouldn't be a bad idea to do as your mother says, it isn't entirely healthy to go through life doing only as others say or seeking their approbation. (Sorry, mom.)

So it turns out that when we turn to others for peace of mind, what we're really doing is looking for someone to tell us "it's going to be all right."

That's a characteristically human foible, to be sure. In a perfect world, we shouldn't have to look to other people to tell us this. No doubt, the affirmation helps. But there is no better affirmation than the personal belief that it will be so. You can't get that from anyone else. To steel oneself and have such conviction takes preparation, work and courage, yes, but it's entirely worth it for real peace of mind.

Six Pixels of Separation

In broad strokes, I have two things to say about Mitch Joel's book Six Pixels of Separation.

First, it's a timely and important read.

Second, I didn't particularly care for it.

Why it's important: it builds a cogent case for leveraging social media as part of an overall business strategy. More than that, it offers helpful insights about how to do so, not just by way of "tips and tricks" but through stories that get the point across quite well. Joel writes: "Everyone is connected. Connect your business to everyone." Indeed, Six Pixels of Separation is an excellent starting point for people curious about not just the "why" of social media, but perhaps also the "how".

Why it didn't resonate with me: I felt that it lacked "oomph", and found myself mostly getting impatient to be done with it because it just never picked up the pace. Compared to a book like, say, What Would Google Do?, which makes plenty of similar points (albeit for a different reason), Six Pixels of Separation seemed rather anemic.

That said, Joel has an interesting blog of the same name. Methinks I prefer his writing in small doses, as opposed to the lengthier exposition that a book affords.

Lumines

Looking through my modest library of PSP titles, the game that gets the most play is probably Lumines.

To think: I sat on the fence for a long time before deciding to try it. As a professed Tetris nerd, this new-fangled puzzle game came across as all shiny graphics, catchy tunes and pretensiously complicated. Indeed, it was only because I found a used copy of the game for cheap that I have mine at all.

But now? I guess you could say I'm positively addicted to it.

When you cut through the fat -- the modernish design conceit, the techno-driven tunes, the thousand and one things happening in the background skins that will give attention deficit disorder a run for its money -- what Lumines has to offer is quite ingenious. In Tetris, the goal is to clear lines created out of blocks made up of at most four squares. The objective in Lumines, however, is to use 2x2 blocks to clear like-colored 2x2 squares. And the more the merrier: whereas the eponymous Tetris allows a player to clear four lines at once in that game, a player can create as many such squares as possible before a relentless timeline runs its course onscreen to clear them.

It's not nearly as complicated as it looks or sounds, and once one overcomes the game's learning curve it's a worthy puzzle game to obsess over. On my first go at it, I mistakenly thought that I could easily apply some of the gameplay principles I'd learned from Tetris and be reasonably good at Lumines. I was wrong (and obviously, an idiot). Yet that misstep helped put into perspective the game's underlying logic. Now? I understand the possibilities that each differently configured 2x2 block represents. I've learned why one has to urgently drop blocks to maximize combos from the approaching timeline. And I better appreciate how the speed at which the timeline passes -- in sync with the music of the background skin -- can make or break a playthrough.

What can I say? I'm hooked.

Recently I picked up a copy of Lumines II, which for all intents and purposes is just a jazzed up version of the first installment. It has new skins, sleeker versions of some older ones, and a soundtrack featuring a variety of established recording artists. While there's something to be said for updating the game (a couple of ugly skins notwithstanding), the bells and whistles felt more like a gimmick than anything else. I doubt that music videos playing in the background enhance the Lumines experience, nor do fancier skins make the game any better.

Then again, I could be wrong. My copy of Lumines II was pre-owned, just like that copy of its predecessor I purchased after much hemming and hawing. And we now know how that turned out.

The Philippine Judiciary [Presentation Thursdays]

View this presentation on Slideshare.

Some old lecture slides on the Philippine Judiciary, circa my teaching days around 2003-2005.

For some reason, I recall the slide template being among the better ones that PowerPoint XP had to offer. Quite appropriate for the topic, too.

[Confused about Presentation Thursdays? Then read the first in the series].

Dissertating 17

Well, that's the idea anyway. I think all graduate students at some stage approach the task with bravado (feigned or otherwise), while at the same time harboring doubts along the lines of "Can I pull it off?", if not "Oh this is just hopeless!" Hence, the image above.

As for me, I've got a shot at wrapping everything up in the Spring (best case). And so the rollercoaster ride continues...

Choice Architecture

Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness starts out as another fine addition to the literature on social psychology and behavioral economics (though its authors may cringe at the association with the latter). Yet it loses some of its sizzle the deeper one gets into it.

Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein's book is all about choice architecture; that is, the way that the presentation and design of choices can (and often do) significantly influence human behavior. To illustrate, Thaler and Sunstein survey many of the celebrated concepts in behavioral science -- framing, anchoring, loss aversion and a host of other concepts besides -- to make the case that it is indeed possible to structure the choices people make to arrive at (mostly) better individual and social outcomes. Such "nudges" seem innocuous, such as the default option in a contribution-based pension plan or the layout of food in a school cafeteria. But because people are people, these nudges can have far-reaching effects, especially if the objective is to encourage a particular type of behavior.

Or at the risk of oversimplifying: the way our choices are framed affects the decisions we make.

It's an easy enough concept to wrap one's head around, yet the authors seem determined to cast it in philosophical terms. On that score, the authors contend that Nudge may also be considered an exposition of what they call "liberal paternalism", the careful use of choice architecture to shape human behavior towards desired outcomes without compromising their individual freedom. While sensible on its own and cogently discussed, this oft-repeated philosophical conceit seems at odds with the book's otherwise accessible presentation. Mostly, the book comes across as a straightforward reader on choice architecture, with Thaler and Sunstein including the occasional anecdote or (very) dry joke to get their points across. Yet they tend to muddle the issue, if not overthink it, by introducing and returning to the notion of liberal paternalism. Of course, all writers are entitled to their pet concepts and idiosyncrasies; yet in the case of Nudge, there is an argument to be made that it may have been an even better book had the authors dialed down the philosophizing, or at least decided from the start to present their ideas in a typically detached academic manner.

Thaler and Sunstein devote early chapters of the book to articulating the notion of liberal paternalism, thereafter applying their insights on choice architecture to specific cases suggested in the book's subtitle (i.e., health, wealth and happiness) that may or may not be of particular interest to readers. Hence, it has enough to offer the academically-inclined and the more practical-minded, if not anyone else who might fall somewhere in the between.

Wow?

The downside of Wow is the After.

So you've delivered Wow. What then? Are you prepared to live up to the heightened expectations? Did you plan for anything that can genuinely top that, or was it a one-off success, with everything else up your sleeve simply more of the same, only different?

Or say you've experienced Wow. What happens next? Are you prepared for the disappointment that nothing else may ever compare? Or will you be obsessed with recapturing the feeling again, an addict jonesing for a fix?

Wow is important. It's what inspires, enthralls and captivates us, enabling us to do our best work and feel good about ourselves. Yet for this same reason, there is sometimes a tendency to shoot for "Wow for wow's sake", turning it into an end in itself and not a means to an end. As a result Wow is debased, transformed into so much of the gimmickry, empty promises and shallow experiences that assault us on a daily basis.

Surely there can be more to Wow than this. Perhaps we've become jaded by so many bells and whistles that we need to be reminded that simplicity and sincerity lie at the core of any Wow experience worth cherishing.

Maybe then the upside of Wow will be the After.

Before Excellence

The virtue of excellence is frequently misunderstood. It's true that the alternative -- mediocrity or apathy (take your pick) -- is untenable. Yet the trouble with "excellence" is that it can easily be reduced to an empty platitude for shallow individuals to readily invoke.

Clearly, we pay too much lip service to the notion of excellence. But a bigger problem is that there's a tendency to forget that any commitment to excellence presupposes more than just basic competence. Values matter, too; indeed, they make all the difference. Without such basic things as honesty, integrity, and the fundamental commitment simply to do good, how can anyone even begin to understand, much less aspire for, excellence?

It's pithy but true: there is a difference between doing things right and doing the right things. A lot of people make the mistake of confusing excellence with the former. In reality, excellence can only begin meaningfully with the latter.

[Image credit: Excellence in Excellence (top) by Hugh MacLeod. The Tom Peters-inspired graphic (bottom) is just me thinkin' visually.]

Motivation 3.0

There's much to commend in Dan Pink's latest offering, Drive.

In the book, Pink argues that there is a fundamental disconnect in the way people are motivated in the modern world. Primitive societies were driven by the desire for sheer survival (Motivation 1.0), while more complex societies had to rely on systems of rewards and punishments to shape behavior and encourage peaceful and productive coexistence (Motivation 2.0). In today's world, however, people are best motivated not by such external factors but from within; that is, by some intrinsic motivation (Motivation 3.0). Yet we persist in trying to motivate people with carrots and sticks, a tack which often results in the opposite of the behavior we hope to encourage.

This is the book's purported "surprising truth about what motivates us", and it is indeed surprising because what seems so intuitive and obvious is hardly the norm by which many live today.

Based on research from the frontiers of psychology, illustrated with real-world examples of unconventional (yet effective) business practices, and conveyed in a straightforward and engaging manner, Drive is anything but a series of platitudes concerning intrinsic motivation. Rather, it is a cogent and compelling treatise on the need to reevaluate how we motivate ourselves.

In the Car

Brother: Did you know that licking a stamp amounts to about one-eighth of a calorie or something?

Brian: How about if you eat the stamp?

Wife: You guys are really weird.