Why We Panic

I had wondered in a previous post why humans have largely descended from people who panic rather than those who don't. Here's are two theories of mine. The first is less likely, but establishes panic as an actual survival trait. The second is more likely, but says that it was the reduction in the number of cool headed people that led to the current state of affairs.

Scenario 1:

Consider the following scenario: Six hunters go into the woods. They are attacked by a tiger. Three of the hunters faint. The other three now have a choice. They could turn and run - leaving their comrades at the mercy of the tiger, or fight the beast. The thing is, if they fight, they will quell the tiger with, say, a 30% chance that one of them will die in the attempt. If they turn and run, however, the tiger, perhaps more attracted by their motion, will chase them rather than stay and eat any of the fainted three. If that does happen, each fleeing hunter has a 33% chance of being the tiger's chosen prey. If chosen, that hunter's death is guaranteed.

Therefore:

Fleeing - 33% chance of death

Fighting - 10% chance of death

Fainting - 0% chance of death

I admit the tiger going after fleeing prey as opposed to just devouring the fainted hunters is a big assumption. I am, however, basing it on the advice we've all been given as children about pretending to be dead when approached by bears (and I presume predators in general) since, apparently they only eat fresh. However, if the assumption is valid, then, in such circumstances, fainting seems to actually work well as a survival trait. Obviously, it would be disastrous for everyone to faint (predators might prefer fresh, but are unlikely to look a gift corpse in the mouth), so I suppose that over time the fainter - fighter ratio will stabilise so that there are just enough fighters to see out the danger. If that number is a small fraction of the overall population, we end up with a society comprised largely of panicky people. 

Scenario 2:

Alternately, over time, only the level headed hunters are trusted to go out and do the dangerous (but necessary) stuff. Since they are exposed to all sorts of dangers, it is obvious that their numbers - relative to the panicky ones - will do down. Again, at stabilisation, the cool thinkers will be a minority.

To be fair, scenario 1 seems pretty far fetched. But it was fun to think up, so what the heck.

On The Late Rise Of Modern Medicine

It took people some thousands of years to make remarkably simple connections in the field of medicine. Consider how long it took them to find out the link between, well, shit mixing with food and food poisoning or shit in drinking water leading to cholera. For some reason, medicine took astonishingly long to reach the level of 'common sense' that we seem to take for granted and see in other fields of science from a lot earlier. I wonder why.

March Of The Machines

When Gary Kasparov finally surrendered humanity's supremacy over the sixty four squares to Deep Blue, there was an air of finality to the whole affair. After all, Kasparov had reigned supreme among humans for over fifteen years before this encounter and went on to stay on top of the human pyramid till he retired some six years later. And he still has the highest rating ever achieved by a human player - which means that he is still the best we've ever had. On the other hand, in terms of raw computing power, Deep Blue probably had less power than, well perhaps even my netbook, for all I know. And I have no doubt that the algorithms have been refined tremendously in those intervening years. It would be interesting to use Kasparov - or the current world number 1 at chess (Magnus Carlsen, I believe) as one qualitative benchmark to see how much computers have progressed in the past fifteen years. Hold a tournament with the world's top 5 grandmasters and about 10 computers of varying power and chess sofware and see where the humans end up after a round robin tournament. I know there are much better ways of quantifying the progress of computing power than this - but this provides a direct comparison with humans and that too in a competitive, combative way. As a child of the '80s and '90s which were so gripped by the whole 'machines taking over' thingy (Terminator, Matrix) I would like to see this. In a masochistic way, I guess.

Beer Ad

I don't really drink. And so, I have to judge beers purely based on ads. And to be honest, shit is par for the course for most beer ads I've seen (though by no means all - some are really good). But I believe a company called 'Coors' has really broken new ground in shittiness. All of their latest ads are pretty dreadful all round. But what really gets me is that the 'theme' around which the whole series of these ads centers is how cold their beer is.

What the heck!?! How shitty does your beer really have to be in every other way (taste, body - whatever that is, alcohol content) that even you have to admit that its strongest selling point is a factor that is beyond your control !?!

A Note On E-Readers

After work, I often go to the Starbuck's that's on the upper landing of the Chapters Store in the Eaton Centre. To get there, I have to pass a display of Kobo Ereaders. I have been intrigued by these for a while and recently, I stopped and tried one of them out. They are cheap, but that's all I am really prepared to say in their favour. In fact, I will even retract that - the model on display costs $139 which is as much as a cheap tablet of the same size - and I happen to know that some Sony models cost almost twice as much. The points that are supposed to be in their favour are that they are clear, that you can read them easily in very bright sunlight and that they last for many weeks, even a couple of months, on a single charge.

The thing is, I'm not sure I've much to complain about the displays of most of the other devices. I mean, my Ipod Touch has a pretty clear display that's pretty easy on the eyes and for those who need a larger screen, I'm sure the Ipad or any other good tablet will more than suffice. Also, I'm not sure how critical the clarity of the e-paper in bright sunlight actually is. I know professional photographers love to show students lounging about on lawns reading novels, but it is something that I have seen done fairly rarely in practice and even then only in the summer, which is a somewhat narrow slice of the year in most of the Western world. Most reading is generally done in the shade. Moreover, from personal experience, unless the sunlight is directly aimed at the screen, I can read off my IPod quite easily even when I'm outside. Similarly, while the ability of the device to go for months without needing to recharge sounds really good, in practice most people are always in fairly easy reach of a power outlet. A device that can hold its charge for about 8 hours is quite adequate. After all, I have yet to read a book that is simultaneously so huge and un-put-down-able that I would just have to read it without stopping (even to plug in the device it's loaded on) - for weeks.

Now consider the various flaws of these ereaders. The first is that they are pretty useless for any other purpose and that's a huge drawback when you consider that many tablets cost the same. But much more importantly, even for their designated purpose they are pretty rubbish. Most of them have an intensely irritating habit of doing a slow white to black to white again flicker you turn a page. If you have to turn many pages, and you do, this gets on your nerves pretty quickly. More irritating is their sheer slowness when it comes to turning the pages. This probably isn't such a big issue when you're reading novels and are not really going to go back and forth often. But if you're reading a technical journal article studded with equations, you will want to do just that. And in that case, these devices are really bad. Furthermore, as more and more journal articles are read online, and representing colour online costs nothing, many papers now use colour in their online formats to state their points more vividly. If you're reading such an article on an ereader, well you can suck it.

The thing is, these devices are very popular. In the past few months, especially, I have seen a huge increase in the number of people on the subway and the streetcar reading from them. So, my question is this: Why have they spent so much money on these devices, especially when better options are available !?!

My personal, cynical take on it is this: they are objects to show off with. Since they can only be used to read books, having one of them on the bus advertises the fact that you are the sort of person who reads. Also, the fact that you have spent so much on the devices proves that you value reading very much. Furthermore, an ereader implies that you read A LOT, and you need such a device to manage your huge collection. And by having an ereader instead of a tablet, you proclaim that such modern distractions as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook are beneath you. You sir (or madam) are a serious, cultured, refined and educated individual.

Ereaders are the new phrasebooks.

Accounting For Time In Cost Of Public Transport

Here is one reason why people select the much more expensive option of driving a car over using public transport:

I'm going to make numerous ball park assumptions here because I'm lazy and besides, it's not as if policy depends on this blog's rantings anyway, so what the heck.

Canada's average per capita income - ~$46000

Average hours worked per year (assuming full time employment): 1820

Average pay/hour: ~$25.27

Based on my experience it takes about 50 minutes to get to work.

Google Maps claims that a car would make the same trip in 20 minutes.

Assume this is representative.

Hence, the daily work commute takes one hour longer on public transit. Let's assume that we consider a person's time to be worth their wage rate (this is a big assumption and not really accurate, but let's assume so anyway).

Therefore, public transit would cost ~$6317.5 (Don't ask me why I bothere with a .5 after saying the figure was approximate.) in terms of hours spent.

Hence the total yearly "cost" of public transport (the actual money you shell out for a transit pass + this cost) = ~$7817

That brings the cost a lot closer to the $8500 figure the CAA mentioned as the yearly cost of an average car.

This makes the decision of people who buy and drive cars a LOT more sensible. And this is not counting the innumerable small trips one would have to make as a parent to satisfy the demands of kids, little trips to the grocery store, etc...

In conclusion, time matters to people. So if you want more people to hop onto a bus, you have to make the bus commutes a lot faster.

Why I Like Canada

I was walking along Marlee Avenue (which is close to where I live) when I saw an elderly lady struggling with a couple of grocery bags. I asked her where she was headed and whether I could help her with the bags. She thanked me and told me that she was going to the bus stop. So I carried her bags to the stop and, since the bus arrived even as we got there, I put the bags on a seat inside for her.

Anywhere else in the world, I would have been thanked by the lady. This being Canada, I was thanked not only by the lady, but also the bus driver and two of the nearer passengers :).

Made my day.

Told You So - Part 2

I have said before that commuting in Toronto sucks, and now StatsCan agrees with me - so there.

On Panic

Why do people panic !?! Or perhaps more accurately, why do they turn into brain frozen, jelly limbed wrecks when they do !?! I mean, surely it is a disastrous trait to become functionally useless at the precise time when danger is clearest (and presentest). I realise that there are some people whose response to danger is to become very level headed - to stay calm and cool in the midst of a crisis. But these people are very clearly in a minority. Moreover, in our long evolutionary path to the present day, humans must have been put in panic inducing situations many, many times and it is more or less obvious that in such situations, the calm ones must invariably perform better than the gibbering twits. And by perform better, I mean survive. How is it then, that most have descended from the flailing, simpering gits and not the brave, calculating icemen !?! How does evolution account for this!?! Conversely, since this trait has obviously withstood the test of time, what purpose does it serve !?!

Told You So

"Six months after Mubarak surrendered to millions of Egyptians, the same generals still rule. Arbitrary detention and allegations of torture are commonplace, if less widespread than before. State media still demonises critics of the junta, and the military – without public consultation – will decide exactly what process is supposed to lead to democratic elections and a civilian government. Reformers and revolutionaries fear the military, stronger now than under Mubarak, will outmanoeuvre them. And they fear Islamists will sweep the elections and control the writing of a new constitution, leading to a democratic Egypt that's neither secular nor liberal."

(Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/12/future-of-egypt-thanassis-cambanis)

As I said, democracy without a strong legal structure and tradition which protects basic human rights will lead to a hell of a lot of trouble .

Not that I have any pretensions to political punditry, of course.

A Possible Project For A Sociology/Psychology Grad

While on the topic, I was really surprised to know that cars cost $8500/year. That means that, even accounting for the occasional cab ride, taking the public option saves you about $6500/year. That's a lot of money. It sort of reinforces my earlier claim - there must be something genuinely important that cars provide that public transport currently doesn't, otherwise people wouldn't spend so much money on them.

How To Save The Planet

Maybe, instead of spending all their (or rather the tax-payers') millions on projects that look for viable ways to harness alternative energies, enviro-activists should spend some of their time and money looking for something else. I mean, consider my friend (call him Dick).

My friend drives a Honda Civic. It's old, and not in the vintage way. It cost him a fair amount to buy, costs him a fair amount to maintain and insure - and then of course, there are the fuel costs. Let us consider a basic, ball park estimate of things:

Yearly costs: $8000-$9000 (source: CAA)

Yearly public transport cost: < $1500

Also, while buses are just as likely to get caught up in traffic jams, subways aren't. Also, even if your bus is in the jam, you aren't driving, so you could read, chat, sleep or do any number of other things.

So, of course, my friend, and millions like him, are silly to drive cars when they could go public right !?!

Well, maybe. But here's the thing. My friend, and many like him, is not rich. The money invested in the car is a hefty chunk of his annual income. The car he drives is nobody's status symbol. And he is well aware of the public option. And yet he persists with the car. As do millions of others like him. There must be something that the cars provide which public transport doesn't. And perhaps, instead of just calling these people irresponsible, enviro-activists should try to find out what exactly that something is. Finding that and then providing it in a public transport facility will do a lot more to help drivers switch than any amount of emotional blackmail.

To me, that seems like a much more immediate way of helping cut down on greenhouse gas emissions and fuel consumption. I'm not saying we shouldn't keep searching for greener energy alternatives - of course we should. But maybe, in the meantime, this could help.