Random quote
A state is always built around an ideology that presupposes a system of values with its good and its evil, its vices and its virtues, its bastards and its heroes, its legends and its truths, its saints and its heretics.

Michel Onfray (1959-) paraphrasing George Orwell (1903-1950).

The myth of Semele

Recently I was in the opera in Lille in France for seeing (and hearing, of course) Handel’s beautiful opera Semele. I enjoyed the music a lot, and as often, when I see an opera and follow the text, it makes me think. So it was this time as well. The story of the opera is that Semele, the leading character, has fallen in love with Jupiter, the highest god in the Roman mythology and religion, and that Jupiter is in love with Semele as well. This love makes Semele very happy, but she is suffering from the fact that she is mortal, since she sees this as an insurmountable barrier between herself and Jupiter. Juno, Jupiter’s wife, comes to hear of her husband’s relationship and becomes extremely jealous. She decides to destroy Semele. Juno takes the shape of Semele’s sister Ino, and in this shape she tells Semele that she can become immortal, if she sees Jupiter in full glory. So, the next time that Semele meets Jupiter, she says that she has a request. Jupiter, who is besotted with love, swears by the Styx, the river that separates the earth from the underworld, that he’ll do everything she asks. However, when he hears Semele’s request, he is shocked, and urgently asks Semele to abandon her wish, because he knows that the consequences will be dramatic. However, Semele insists that she wants to see him in his full divine glory. Because of his oath, Jupiter can’t refuse and Semele dies “in the embrace of its incandescent rays”, as the programme of the opera tells us.
I think that we can learn several lessons from this opera, also from the parts I haven’t told here, but when watching the opera, my thoughts gradually moved to the idea: There are limits to your wishes and to what you can like to happen to you. Don’t ignore the warnings of others, for if you don’t, it can lead to your fall. Know your limits.
Handel had derived the story of the opera from one of the classics of the ancient Roman literature: the Metamorphoses, a Latin narrative poem by Ovid written in 8 AD. So, wanting to write a blog about Semele’s story, I went to the original version, as told by Ovid. As it often happens in operas, the content of the libretto is different from the original text. So it is also in this case. The main lines are the same, but in fact, Ovid tells us something else. However, also Ovid’s version of the myth of Semele is today still as relevant as Handel’s interpretation. Also Ovid tells us that Semele and Jupiter are in love with each other, but now Jupiter has made Semele pregnant. When Juno hears about it, she becomes extremely furious, and also in Ovid’s story she wants to destroy Semele. However, now Juno goes to Semele in the appearance of Beroe, a nurse from Epidaurus, who tended Semele. “Beroe” asks Semele whether she really knows that her lover is Jupiter. For how often has it happened that a man has deceived his love, lying to her that he is a god. Then Beroe/Juno says to Semele: “When Jove appears to pledge his love to you, implore him to assume his majesty and all his glory, even as he does in presence of his stately Juno”. The rest of the story goes as in the opera. Semele expresses her wish the next time she meets Jupiter. Jupiter, in love, swears that he’ll fulfil it, anyhow, but despite his effort to mitigate his overwhelming power, Semele’s “mortal form could not endure the shock and she was burned to ashes in his sight.” However, her unborn son, who would become Bacchus, the god of wine and ecstasy, was saved.
Also Ovid’s version of the story of Semele can be given several interpretations, but I think that an important lesson for us is this: Don’t believe in fake news: It can kill you.

Sources
The website of the opera in Lille: https://www.opera-lille.fr/spectacle/semele/
An English translation of Semele’s myth in Ovid’s Metamorphoses: https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0028%3Abook%3D3%3Acard%3D251

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Heroes are people who defend their country, not those who attack another country.

A user of VKontakte (the “Russian Facebook”)

Being famous

Montaigne begins his essay “Not to communicate one’s glory” (Essays, Book I-41) with the words: “Of all the follies of the world, that which is most universally received is the solicitude of reputation and glory”. The last thing people want to give up, so Montaigne, is the idea of becoming famous and, following Cicero, Montaigne writes: “even those who most controvert it, would yet that the books they write about it should visit the light under their own names, and seek to derive glory from seeming to despise it.” Now, I think that there is much truth in it, although I also think that for a kind of person like me it would be a torture to be really famous, and it is something I would avoid to become. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t publish a book without my name on the cover, so that everybody knows that it is me who has written it, and I don’t want that someone uses my photos without referring to me as the photographer. And didn’t also Montaigne himself have his name printed on the cover of his Essays? Nevertheless, it is as if Montaigne will make us think that trying to be famous is mere vanity and something that must be disapproved of. I agree that striving for fame only because of the fact itself is vanity, but I think that at least being a little bit famous, or at least being known, has also positive sides: it opens doors. Often people cannot reach their goals because nobody knows them and because just for this reason they are not taken seriously. Once people know you, or rather they have heard of you, they tend to listen better to you and are more disposed to help (and maybe they even think that they can profit by helping you). This doesn’t imply, of course, that your goals are worth to be achieved for the simple reason that you are known.
However, some people like it to be famous, since they see it as an intrinsic positive value. For them being a celebrity is not an agony but a joy. Moreover, its open doors, and the more famous you are, the more doors can be opened. It gives you power. But there is a risk, for don’t we say that power corrupts? Of course, this is not always the case but it often happens. The Me-Too affaires are a case in point. Actually, it is something like the Peter Principle. The Peter Principle, developed by Peter Hull and explained in his book The Peter Principle (written together with Raymond Hull) tells us that “in a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence”. As the Wikipedia explains: “Employees are promoted based on their success in previous jobs until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent, as skills in one job do not necessarily translate to another.” To my mind, this principle is not only valid for employees, but the phenomenon is general: People who strive to rise socially tend to reach a level that is that high that they cannot bear the burdens of this high position any longer or that they tend to overestimate themselves. Again the Me-Too affaires are exemplary.
So, the Peter Principle is not only restricted to employees. We can also apply it to celebrities, and generally to people who have come at the top and have got power. As for the latter, I think that the Peter Principle applies especially to people with power in authoritarian structures; in closed structures, to paraphrase Karl Popper. For where authoritarianism reigns and openness or democracy is absent, criticism is absent as well; and where criticism is absent, people cannot be corrected for their mistakes. Authoritarian leaders become isolated, are cut off from criticism, tend to box up themselves in their ivory towers, and become closed off from reality. And finally they are toppled. We see it in organisations, where managers are often dismissed for that reason and we see it in politics as well. Look around: How many authoritarian political leaders reach the end of their careers in a normal way? Stalin was one of the few who “peacefully” died in his bed. Most are chased away, if not killed, by the rising men under them, or by the people.
Once being famous, people often want to become more famous, for the fact itself and because it gives power. Others just want to have power. But whatever the road to power you have taken, once you have got it, it is not unlikely that you are going to overplay your hand. We see it, for instance, in Russia, where Putin thought that, after having taken the Crimea, in the same easy way he could control Ukraine as a whole. But in his ivory tower, he hadn’t seen that Ukraine 2022 is different from Ukraine-2014. But let’s stop here, for in a Montaignian way I have already too much drifted off from my original theme, and that is that being famous can be an agony, if not for yourself, then for others, but being a little bit known usually has only positive sides. For power it’s the same. Too much power makes a hell for many, but a little bit is useful for making things run. Be open for others, and especially be moderate. Didn’t already Plato say that moderacy is one of the cardinal virtues?

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Don't forget: Whoever allows an injustice to continue for long is preparing the way for the next one.

Willy Brandt (1913-1992)

Photo taken in Lille, France

The cows and their pasture

A farmer was not satisfied with his piece of land. He wanted to have more. He thought: My neighbour has such good fertile land, he will not miss it, if I’ll take strip of it. So, on a moonless pitch-dark night, he took a spade, left his farm, walked to the border of his land, and moved the fence that separated his land and his neighbour’s a few tens of metres. In this way the farmer added a strip to his own terrain. In order to be sure that it was allowed to do so, the farmer asked the cows on his new strip of land what they thought of this change. The cows became afraid, for they saw that there was no going back, because the fence had already been moved behind their backs. Might the farmer not bring them to the butcher? And hoping that this would not happen, they said “moo” and the farmer understood that the cows agreed with the change, or so he thought.
The next morning the farmer’s neighbour woke up early in the morning and he got a shock, for he saw what had happened, and he became very angry. But what to do about it? For his neighbour the robber had not only more cows (for his neighbour had more extensive pastures and meadows), he had also more butchers. Nevertheless the farmer whose land had been stolen said: I am gong to kick that scoundrel off my land. So he went to his friends and asked them to send butchers in order to help him and to send knives as well. However, his friends said: We’ll not send you butchers, for we are afraid that they’ll be killed and that it will make your neighbour angry with us, what we don’t want to happen, but we do have very good knives. Our knives are much better than your neighbour’s knives. His knives are blunt, while ours are sharp, and also the steel of our knives is much better. So it happened that the farmer whose land had been stolen got many knives of very good quality, and his butchers began to chase his neighbour’s butchers away and to put the fence back to where it stood before, for the knives the farmer had received were much better indeed. And the cows mooed again, for they were very happy that the old situation was restored, for they loved their farmer.
The upshot is: Don’t rob your neighbour if your knives aren’t sharp.

Random quote
The first essential step on the road to total domination is to kill the juridical person in man. This [is] done, on the one hand, by putting certain categories of people outside the protection of the law and forcing at the same time, through the instrument of denationalization, the nontotalitarian world into recognition of lawlessness; it [is] done, on the other hand, by placing the concentration camp outside the normal penal system, and by selecting its inmates outside the juridical procedure in which a definite crime entails a predictable penalty.

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) 

Types of noise

In my blog about “noise” last week, I did as if there is only one type of noise. Also Kahneman et al. do so in the beginning of their book Noise. In fact, there are several types of noise. It is important to know them, if you want to reduce noise, for each type requires a different approach. This blog explains these types of noise. If you want to talk about these types of noise in general terms, you can use the term system noise: variability in judgments of the same case, anyhow.
Kahneman et al. often use judicial cases, so let me start doing so as well. In court there are no objective judgments for comparable cases, for a judgment does not only depend on the objective facts of the case (like that a man with a white collar job who steals € 10,000 always is sentenced to one month in prison, or to a fine of € 5,000 euros), but a judge is supposed to consider the circumstances of the crime (did the man steal for the first time or is he a recidivist; does he really need the money, for instance, because he cannot pay the rising energy prices or does he have a big bank account; etc.). Nevertheless, some judges have the reputation for being harsher than average and others for being more lenient. Such a deviation from the average is called level noise: The judgments of several judges are scattered around the (virtual) average judgment of comparable cases (the virtual “right judgment”, as we could say). Of course, we can wonder whether there really exists a right judgment or, generally, a right decision in a case where we must decide, but there is no denying that on average some people are harsher in their judgments than others; some are always more optimistic when they must decide and others are more pessimistic; and so on. It is often unwished-for; it is something we want to avoid, since it is noise.
Even though some judges are harsher on average and other judges more lenient; even though some deciders are more optimistic on average and others more pessimistic; even then there is variation in this “harshness” or “optimism” depending on the case at hand. A certain judge may be generally harsher than average but relatively more lenient towards, for instance, white-collar criminals. A lenient judge may on average give harsher sentences to recidivists. A generally optimist sales manager may be pessimist when she must decide about future investments. In other words, whether judgments, decisions and what more are harsher, more optimistic, etc. than average is not once and for all so for a certain person: it depends also on the types of cases at hand. A harsh judge may judge some types of cases harsh, given his reputation, and other types of cases relatively lenient. There is often a kind of pattern in his harshness. Therefore, this type of noise is called pattern noise. Note that we are still talking about unwished-for deviations from virtually right judgments (decisions, or what the case may be), if many judges (deciders, etc.) would judge the case. This type of noise makes that your judgments or decisions are scattered around your decision style (harshness or leniency, for instance).
Then there is yet a quite banal kind of noise: occasion noise. All kinds of accidental and circumstantial factors may have an influence on what you judge and decide. To mention a few: fatigue; mental pressure; that the sun is shining or that it is a rainy day; that your daughter has birthday; that your favourite team has won. All such occasional factors and circumstances may influence your mood and can influence the way you judge and decide; in general the way you act. They make that your judgments or decisions are scattered around what you personally ideally (free from this kind of noise) would decide.
As we have seen, noise is not a unidimensional phenomenon. There are at least three kinds of noise. This has practical consequences, namely that there is not one method to reduce noise. So, although level noise and pattern noise may be reduced by a training that makes you aware of the problem, it will not reduce fatigue. On the other hand, sleeping well will not have an impact on the other kinds of noise. Although noise is a general problem, it requires a specific approach, not only according to type but also in agreement with the problem at hand, for deciding as a judge which judgement to pass is very different from deciding as a manager how much to invest, for instance.

Source
Daniel Kahneman, Oliver Sibony, Cass R. Sunstein, Noise. A Flaw in Human Judgment. London: William Collins, 2021; pp. 69-93.

Random quote
The little girl saw her first troop parade and asked, 
‘What are those?’
‘Soldiers.’
‘What are soldiers?’
‘They are for war. They fight and each tries to kill as many of the other side as he can.’
The girl held still and studied. 
‘Do you know ... I know something?’
‘Yes, what is it you know?’
‘Sometime they’ll give a war and nobody will come.

From The People, Yes (1936), an epic poem by Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) 

Noise

Recently I wrote a blog about Informational Cascades, after having read about it in the book Noise by Daniel Kahneman et al. Actually, I should have written about the main theme of the book in the first place, of course: Noise. According to the authors noise is a much ignored and neglected problem in research and in many daily practices when decisions must be taken. Noise must be distinguished from Bias, so the authors. Unlike noise, they say, bias does get much attention in decision practices. The reason is that bias is relatively easy to establish and to avoid, if you invest some time in doing so, while noise is often difficult to establish, and once you know that it is there, it is difficult to get a grip on it.
When reading the book I got the impression that it is a rather recently discovered problem, though the authors do not say so. Anyway, I remember that already when I studied sociology around 1970, my methodology books paid attention to the problem of noise and bias. However, then they had other names. Then it was called the problem of reliability and validity of measuring instruments (since we are talking about sociology, you must think of 5-point or 7-point measuring scales, questionnaires and the like, but in fact the problem applies to any measurement). A measuring instrument is called valid if it measures what it is supposed to measure, and it is called reliable if it gives the same result each time when it is used to measure the same object.
This brings us to the heart of the noise-bias distinction, for a reliable measuring instrument is noise-free and if it is a valid instrument it is bias-free. Preferably it is both. Instead of further clarifying the valid-reliable distinction, I’ll continue discussing the bias-noise distinction, since in fact it is the same.
Kahneman et al. give a clear example of the distinction and once you understand it, you know what bias and noise are and the rest is “only” the problem how to avoid them. Four teams of four archers go to an archery range. Each person does one shot. Ideally, each archer should hit the bull’s eye. These are the results for each team (for practical reasons I copied the figure from the Wikipedia):

As you can see in the figure, all members of team-a hit the bull’s eye. The result was accurate. The result of team-b was also accurate in a sense, because all team members hit the same point but the shots are systematically off the target. Therefore, we call the result biased. The results of team-c are all around the bull’s eye, but they are scattered around the target. Therefore, we call the team result noisy. The result of team-d is both systematically off the target and it is scattered around the wrong target point. Therefore, we call this team result biased and noisy at the same time. I think that this illustration makes clear what the essence of bias and noise is, especially if we summarize the concepts this way: Bias is systematic deviation, while noise is random scatter. The difference between bias and noise becomes especially clear, if we look at the back side of the targets the archers were shooting at (see the figure below):

If you didn’t know where the bull’s eye of the target is, you couldn’t know whether team-a or team-b was closer to the bull’s eye, but it will be clear to you that both the results of team-c and team-d are noisy. As Kahneman et al. say: “A general property of noise is that you can recognize and measure it while knowing nothing about the target of the bias.” Or in terms of validity and reliability: We don’t know whether the results of teams a and b are valid, but we do know that the results of teams c and d are not reliable. Once you know what the problem is, the question is how to solve it, which often is far from easy. However, this must not be a reason to ignore the problem, for it’s really important as some examples by Kahneman et al. show:
- Faced with the same patient different doctors often make different judgements.
- Case managers in child protection agencies often make mistakes in judging whether a child must be placed in foster care since there is a risk of abuse. Some managers are more likely to send a child to foster care than others. However, children wrongly assigned to foster care have poorer life outcomes, like delinquency rates.
- Weather forecasts are known to be noisy.
- Interviewers of job candidates make widely different assessments of the same people. Moreover, performance ratings of the employees depend more on the person doing the assessment than on the performance being assessed.

Source
Daniel Kahneman, Oliver Sibony, Cass R. Sunstein, Noise. A Flaw in Human Judgment. London: William Collins, 2021; pp. 3-7.

Random quote
When empty words are given capital letters, then, on the slightest pretext, men will begin shedding blood for them and piling up ruin in their name, without effectively grasping anything to which they refer, since what they refer to can never have any reality, for the simple reason that they mean nothing.

Simone Weil (1909-1943) 

Red herring

Since unsound argumentation and wrong reasoning are quite common and can have annoying consequences, I regularly pay attention to this problem. It’s not only for my readers but also for myself, for I, too, often make reasoning errors or don’t see it, when others make them. Some incorrect argumentations are logical mistakes. They are called formal fallacies. Other incorrect argumentations are not so much logically false but they employ crippled reasoning. They are called informal fallacies. Some crippled reasoning is not even that, and it may be even correct. I mean, the reasoning as such is correct but it has little to do with the question it is supposed to answer or the problem it is supposed to solve. From this point of view, there is no rhyme or reason in it. If this happens, the speaker or writer commits the red herring fallacy.
As said, the reasoning in a red herring argument as such need not to be false. It can also be intentionally put forward that way, for a red herring often serves as a way of distraction from the question or problem at stake. It is used as a diversionary tactic.
Let’s see what Heather Rivera in my book Bad Arguments says about it (see Reference): “A red herring is a distraction device and refers to an informal logical fallacy that distracts from the actual issue, allowing one to be sidetracked from what is actually happening and to draw a false conclusion.” (p. 208)
Often a red herring discussion runs as follows (compare p. 208):
1) Person 1 presents argument, issue or topic A.
2) Person 2 introduces argument, issue or topic B.
3) Argument, issue or topic A is abandoned or forgotten and the discussion goes on about argument, issue or topic B.
Red herrings belong to the most frequent informal fallacies. They happen in many discussions and interviews. Let me quote again Rivera: “This [the 3-step argumentation given above] occurs on a daily basis when a reporter or journalist asks the typical politician a question related to one issue (complete with its associated argument), and the politician responds with a wholly different – but often compelling – issue (complete with an associated argument.” (p. 209)
This time I’ll not illustrate my blog with an example, but I’ll ask you to do something: The next time you see an interview with a politician, on TV, on the Internet or in real, just listen whether the person interviewed really answers the questions asked or whether he or she instead (so without answering the questions asked) leads the conversation to a theme s/he wants to talk about or simply leads the interview away from a theme s/he doesn’t want to talk about. If so, the politician throws a red herring to you. Of course, after having read this blog you’ll not pick it up, for you have become wiser. You know now that s/he tries to mislead you, intentionally, or, unintentionally, for example, because s/he is not smart enough to understand the question asked. And what does the interviewer do? Does s/he see that the interview is going the wrong way?

Reference

Arp, Robert; Steven Barbone; Michael Bruce (eds.), Bad arguments. 100 of the most important fallacies in Western philosophy. Oxford, etc.: Wiley Blackwell, 2019. Especially Heather Rivera, “Red Herring”, pp. 208-210. 

Random quote
We call on our right to physical integrity to maintain unlimited freedom to expose other people to infection by a life-threatening virus. We then claim a right to care if we become ill ourselves without shame about the care that is being withheld from others.

Govert den Hartogh (1943)

Why do we wear clothes?

Do animals not wear clothes?

Montaigne writes about all aspects of life. He writes about how we live and how to live. Or he writes about practical aspects of life, for example, that it would be useful if each town had a central information point where you can get all the information you need. (see my blog last week) Montaigne writes also about aspects of life that are so obvious that they are ignored by most of us. In this sense the Essays are also a kind of philosophy of daily life in the style as later elaborated by, for instance, Michel de Certeau (see for example here). This branch of philosophy discusses common if not banal aspects of daily life that are ignored most of the time but that belong to the constitutive aspects of who we are. Essay I-36, Of the custom of clothing oneself, is a case in point.
In this essay I-36 Montaigne wonders why actually we wear clothes. Isn’t it strange that while animals and plants live on this earth with the skin uncovered, “it is incredible that we only are brought into the world in a defective and indigent condition, and in such a state as cannot subsist without external aid.” Plants and animals don’t need clothes to protect themselves, and therefore Montaigne thinks that it is a human defect that we need them. That’s also what once many who have discussed the problem often thought. But is it really so?
To my mind, Montaigne actually doesn’t come to the point in this essay, which is – as so many essays – rather casuistic and gives only examples of persons and people who do or do not wear clothes in certain – often the same – circumstances. It’s true, Montaigne makes us aware of a fact of human life that belongs to the human condition, but it is not more than that. Anyway, after having stated that plants and animals are better adapted to nature than humans are, just because they do not wear clothes or another cover, Montaigne observes that “… of those nations who have no manner of knowledge of clothing, some are situated under the same temperature that we are, and some in much colder climates.” At first sight this observation says that clothes are actually not necessary. However, another reading of this passage says, I think, just why we are better adapted than plants and animals that have no other choice than to go naked: Clothes make it possible to adapt to the environment according to your personal wishes. And although in certain climates clothes may seem superfluous, they make it possible to live in climates in which humans without clothes cannot live. In other words, clothes extend the life possibilities. They are not a defect but an improvement of the human condition and they are one of the factors that have made human beings so successful.
I could go on with my close reading of this essay and show that Montaigne, implicitly and without being aware of it himself, points to other functions of clothes as well. See for example Montaigne’s statement “I observe much greater distance betwixt my habit and that of one of our country boors, than betwixt his and that of a man who has no other covering but his skin.” Or, “The Romans fought at a very great disadvantage, in the engagement they had with the Carthaginians near Piacenza, by reason that they went to the charge with their blood congealed and their limbs numbed with cold, whereas Hannibal had caused great fires to be dispersed quite through his camp to warm his soldiers, and oil to be distributed amongst them, to the end that anointing themselves, they might render their nerves more supple and active, and fortify the pores against the violence of the air and freezing wind, which raged in that season.” Such and other observations just point to reasons why clothes are important for humans and why humans can use clothes for certain practical – and also social and personal – functions that do not exist for plants and animals. However, I’ll limit myself to mentioning the most important functions of clothes:
- Protection. This can be a protection against the climate, against the actual weather conditions but also the kind of protection given by work clothes, such as gloves protecting your hands against scratches, the helmet of a cyclist or the clothes of a fireman.
- Identification, like the uniform of a police officer or the club outfit of a sports team.
- Modesty: The clothes you wear for a certain occasion like a feast or a funeral.
- Status: Clothes used to express your rank or position in society. What is actually the same: the clothes you wear to express the group you identify with, like wearing casual clothes or a suit, not on a certain occasion but for indicating your reference group.
- Adornment. Despite the functions just mentioned, in many cases personal variation in colour and style of clothes is possible in order to express personal taste and appearance.
It will not be difficult to find more functions that clothes have. All this makes clear that far from being a defect in the human condition, cloths create possibilities and they are an expression of human adaptation and human culture.

Random quote
Terror is a weapon that cuts on one side. It always has more control over those who want to retain their freedom and happiness than those who want to destroy it.

Simone Weil (1909-1943)

A defect in our social system

You may wonder whether there is moral advancement in history, but one thing is sure: many practical problems have been solved that once seemed insolvable; or existing solutions have been improved. Of course, I knew, but again I became aware of how times have changed, when I happened to read again Montaigne’s short essay “Of a defect in our government” (Essays Book I-35). In this essay Montaigne tells us that his father got the idea that every city should have an official that could give you all the information you needed. “For example: I want a chapman to buy my pearls; I want one that has pearls to sell; such a one wants company to go to Paris; such a one seeks a servant of such a quality; such a one a master; such a one such an artificer; some inquiring for one thing, some for another, every one according to what he wants. And doubtless, these mutual advertisements would be of no contemptible advantage to the public correspondence and intelligence: for there are evermore conditions that hunt after one another, and for want of knowing one another’s occasions leave men in very great necessity.” And indeed, when I grew up five centuries after Montaigne wrote these words, much had already been improved, and there were many people that could quickly give you the information you needed. But often you had yet to go to their offices or at least call them up. Moreover, the information was spread, so not concentrated in one person. However, since twenty-five years or so there is a simple solution for this information problem, a solution neither Montaigne nor his father would ever have dreamt of: The Internet. The nice thing about the internet is not only that you have a central point where you can get the information you need, as proposed by Montaigne’s father. But more, you have this “information office” at home and you can consult it any day and any time you like.
Also the two other defects Montaigne mentioned in this essay can simply be solved by the same technology. Montaigne mentions two scholars, one in Italy and one in Germany, who died of hunger, because no one helped them. But he adds: “I believe there are a thousand men who would have invited them into their families, with very advantageous conditions, or have relieved them where they were, had they known their wants.” Who wouldn’t be prepared to help such “rare and remarkable persons”, so Montaigne (and I think, also persons who are less “rare and remarkable”)? Also in such cases, without doubt, a call on Facebook or other social media website would certainly help to find a solution, for example by starting a crowd funding action.
The last problem mentioned by Montaigne actually tells us more about the man himself than about the problem, for Montaigne did know a solution but he simply didn’t use it. His father had engaged a secretary “to keep a journal, and in it to set down all the remarkable occurrences, and daily memorials of the history of his house”, like what happened in his castle, which works had been completed, who visited the castle, which travels Montaigne’s father and his family had made, which marriages had taken place in the castle, and so on. So this secretary kept a kind of diary of the family life and the castle. But apparently Montaigne was too lazy to do so and later he wrote “I did very foolishly in neglecting it.” But could he have used a computer, laptop or smartphone, wouldn’t the task haven’t been much simpler? Even more, many of your life events are automatically registered by the modern media and technology and doesn’t Facebook remind you again and again of what happened a year ago or who knows when?
Modern times, modern solutions. However, though in Montaigne’s days the problem was how to get the information you needed, now the problem is how to get rid of it. For it is not only so that you basically know everything about everything and everybody, but everybody also knows everything about you. 

Random quote
In a group, confident people have more weight than others, even if they have no reason to be confident.

Daniel Kahneman, Oliver Sibony, Cass R. Sunstein 

Informational cascades

Skógafoss, Iceland

Sometimes we make our own decisions; sometimes we follow a decision taken by someone else. There can be good reasons for following another person, but if an agent makes a decision based on what another person does without regard to his own private information, just because s/he thinks that what the other decides must be right, and if other agents do so as well, then we are in an informational cascade (or information cascade).
Let’s take an example (from Noise by Daniel Kahneman et al. pp. 100-103). Ten people must decide whom to hire for an important position. There are three candidates and the members of the group announce their views in sequence. Arthur speaks first and sees Thomas as the best choice. Then Barbara speaks. She is not sure that Thomas is the best choice but is unsure who is. She trusts Arthur and so she chooses Thomas as well. Next it’s Charles’s turn. He thinks that Thomas is not a good candidate but that Julie is. Nevertheless, he also chooses Thomas, not because he feels under pressure and doesn’t have the courage to give a different opinion, but because he thinks that Arthur and Barbara have good reasons for their choices. Unless David, person 4, has strong reasons against the choice of Thomas, probably he’ll follow the others before him. If so, then we are in a cascade. Etc.
Informational cascades are also a much happening economic phenomenon. Here is an example, taken from the Investopedia: Someone might think that a certain financial pundit has more knowledge and information than he himself has. Therefore, he imitates the pundit’s stock picks. A neighbour observes him boasting about his stock picks, and she also picks the same stocks. Another neighbour notices that both people chose the same stocks and assumes that those stocks must be good picks, simply because more than one person has picked them. An informational cascade has begun, and all of the participants have very little information to back up their decision-making.
Informational cascades also happen in daily life. A group of friends wants to go out to eat together. Each one of the friends has his or her preferences where to go. One proposes a restaurant and the others agree.
There are several conditions that make that we can speak of an informational cascade (see here and here):
- There is a decision to be made; agents make the decision sequentially, and each agent can observe the choices made by those who acted earlier.
- A limited action space exists (e.g. an adopt/reject decision).
- Agents make decisions rationally based on the – usually limited – information they have.
- Agents do not have access to the private information of others.
Note that each decision is based on the information the agent has and that the agent is not deciding under group pressure. Maybe s/he has some doubts about the group decision, but in fact s/he trusts that the others are right and actually the agent lacks good reasons that they are not. Otherwise s/he would have said so. From this point of view, it’s not necessarily irrational for the later deciding agents to follow the decision others have already expressed. If you are not really sure what to do, it may be smart to follow the others.
Nevertheless, an informational cascade is not unproblematic. First, if another agent would have expressed his or her choice first, another decision might have been taken by the group; or, second, if the first agent also was not really sure what to decide, s/he might have taken another decision. So the final decision can be the result of the arbitrary decision of the person speaking first. Third, people tend to ignore that other agents are in the same informational cascade and are not deciding independently. They may think that there is some crowd wisdom, while in fact they follow the initial view of the first decider. Fourth, the decision of the first decider may be completely wrong with possible nasty consequences if everybody follows this person.
Although the decision procedure just sketched is far from uncommon, it is risky. Note that it is a procedure that is applied in a situation in which the agents are not really sure what to do and that their decisions are sequentially taken and known to everybody. In such a situation the final decision tends to be arbitrary and can even have fatal consequences. Market leaders can be the source of much financial if not economic harm, if others mistakenly think that they have the right information and therefore follow them. It is also possible that a decider is not reliable, and a non-reliable agent who wants to manipulate a decision to his or her advantage can try to be the one who decides first, hoping that others will follow. Or, a committee can take the wrong decision, such as hiring the wrong person, if it uses a sequential decision procedure and gets into a cascade. Or friends can go to the wrong restaurant. One solution to avoid an informational cascade is to vote by secret ballot, but this doesn’t work in a financial market. Then we come to such solutions as think twice before you act. However, informational cascades can also have positive effects. The fall of the German Democratic Republic in 1989 was the result of initially small protests in Leipzig that gradually grew because more and more people decided to join, just because others did. People followed other people without really knowing whether to do so was right, in the sense that the protests could have led to a massacre as well. Informational cascades are fragile phenomena.

Sources: The references quoted in the text.

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The average expert is roughly as accurate as a dart-throwing chimpanzee

Philip E. Tetlock (1954-)

Why I become tired, when I write a blog

I often make a bike ride. When I ride with an easy speed and the distance is not long, afterwards I feel relaxed. When I ride a long distance with a fast speed, I feel tired at the end. We think it’s normal that making a great physical effort makes you tired. It is because your muscles become filled with lactic acid, which must be cleared up in order to feel fresh and rested again.
Once a week I write a blog. When I have finished it, I feel tired, for usually it is a hard job. So, afterwards I want to relax, for instance by making an easy bike ride. But why do I feel tired? Most of the time I sat down in my chair and only my fingers moved a little bit in order to type my blog and to do a few internet searches. Nonetheless, I feel tired. Even more, mentally tired people who must take decisions, like chess players, are going to make mistakes, just because they are tired; types of mistakes they wouldn’t make with a fresh mind. How come?
Several explanations have been given why thinking makes you tired. Actually, you are not tired but bored, some say. You want to do something else and so your brain tells you that you are tired. Or, another explanation, the deeper you go into a problem, the more complicated it seems, so that’s why you are going to make mistakes. It’s a way to explain mistakes made by chess players. At the beginning of a game they can use their routine, but later on they must rely on their insight and then they can fail. Other explanations for mental fatigue have been suggested as well. However, a group of French researchers didn’t find the existing explanations very satisfying, so they developed their own approach. Let’s look in the brain and see what happens if people get mentally tired, they thought, and they developed relevant tests. If you make a light physical or mental effort, you don’t become tired, but you do if your effort is hard. Maybe, you become mentally tired because some stuff piles up in your brain when you are thinking, which makes that you feel fatigue; just as in the case of a physical effort like cycling. Therefore, these researchers developed a light and a difficult version of the same mental task and watched the brains of their test persons and looked what happened; moreover, they looked at the reaction of the pupils. The task chosen lasted several hours. For watching into the brains of the test persons, they used an MRS scanner (MRS = magnetic resonance spectroscopy). With such a scanner you can see what happens with the blood currents and the chemistry in the brain, when the test person is active or passive.
What did they find? Indeed, becoming tired when doing a mental task is not a mental affaire, but it is as physical as becoming tired in your legs when cycling. There were clear differences between the test persons that did a light task (and didn’t become tired) and those who did a hard task (which made them tired). The researchers saw signs of fatigue, including reduced pupil dilation, only in the latter group. Those in that group also showed in their choices a shift toward options proposing rewards at short delay with little effort. But most important, they had higher levels of glutamate in synapses of the brain’s prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain in the forehead where decisions are taken. These results made the researchers conclude, together with earlier evidence, that it is likely that glutamate accumulation makes further activation of the prefrontal cortex more costly, such that cognitive control is more difficult after a mentally tough workday. In other words, glutamate poisons your brain and that’s why it disturbs your thinking. Only after it has been cleared up, you feel fresh and rested again. Actually, there is not much difference between feeling physical and mental fatigue. The difference is in the details and the solution is also the same, and actually not really surprising: take a rest or take a nap. And if you are really tired, go to bed. The conclusion feels like kicking open an open door. Nevertheless, it isn’t. People often think: I am tired, the task must be done. And they go on till the job has finished. Maybe, they even think that feeling mentally tired is an illusion, and anyway that it’s not that bad (think of doctors, at the end of a workday). Maybe, there are other reasons to go on, but from a psychological point of view it’s a bad idea: It’s almost sure that mistakes will be made. Fatigue is an objective real phenomenon with a physical base. So, avoid making important decisions when you are tired.
The knowledge from this study (and from future research) can also help to tackle mental problems. For example, the researchers say, monitoring of prefrontal metabolites could help to detect severe mental fatigue. Such an ability may help adjust work agendas to avoid burnout. In future studies, the researchers hope to learn why the prefrontal cortex seems especially susceptible to glutamate accumulation and fatigue. They’re also curious to learn whether the same markers of fatigue in the brain may predict recovery from health conditions, such as depression or cancer.
So, now you understand why I am tired, when I have written a blog.

Sources
- “Why thinking hard makes you tired”, Cell Press (here and there above literally quoted or paraphrased)
- Antonius Wiehler et al. “A neuro-metabolic account of why daylong cognitive work alters the control of economic decisions”

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The ego is the product of the development of the personality and not - as many psychologists assume - the producer of the personality.

Gerhard Roth (1942-)