A True Story

Alice was feeling particularly poor at a certain time in her life and because of this she was under a lot of stress.  Her friend, Bob, was a billionaire many times over and he disliked seeing his friend in pain and so he wrote her a blank check and said, “Alice, whatever amount you cash this for, it will relieve me of the burden of figuring out what to do with it.  Will you do me the favor of accepting this gift?”  Alice was stunned because she knew she could have cashed the check for $30 Million and Bob would not have missed it at all.  And she knew Bob was sincere in what he was saying.

Alice was overwhelmed with Bob’s kindness, but instantly relieved of the stress.  It was a big decision though, how much to take, and Alice didn’t want to make it hastily.  She put the check in her safety deposit box at the bank so she could sleep on it.  But she still hadn’t figured out the answer the next day and so the check remained there.  This went on for a week, eventually a month.  Bob didn’t mention the check and while Alice thought about it every day, the amount of time she did so diminished.  Life has a way of crowding out unnecessary thoughts, and despite Alice’s financial difficulties, there were other realities that needed more attention.  Alice knew she’d get to it soon enough and wanted to choose the right amount of money to accept, both because it was important for her future, but also out of respect for Bob’s gift.

Twenty years later, Alice was very successful financially (and otherwise) and Bob asked her to meet him.  Bob was under some stress because a relative of his had fallen on hard times and was in desperate need of cash.  Bob knew his cousin was too proud to ask Bob for help and was thinking of how he could give the money to his cousin anonymously without the cousin figuring it out.

The amount of money to give was an important detail, but Bob was stumped, so he asked Alice’s advice.  ”Alice, I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but my memory isn’t so good anymore and it was a long time ago that I gave you that blank check, but I can’t for the life of me remember how much you cashed it for.  Would you mind telling me so I have some idea of what an appropriate amount would be for my cousin?”

Alice smiled, “Bob, I’m happy to tell you, but first I need you to understand that what you gave me that day was the best gift that anyone has ever given me, for which I am eternally grateful.  And because your gift has allowed me to become successful and realize my dreams, I’ve been giving similar gifts to those around me who I know will be similarly helped by it.  Also, I think it’s time I return what you gave to me that day, after all it’s been 20 years….”

Bob began to protest; he didn’t want the money back, he just wanted to know what amount to give to his cousin, but Alice ignored him and reached into her wallet and came out with a check.  ”Here’s the check you gave me that day.  I never cashed it.  I don’t know what the right number of dollars is for your cousin, but the right amount for me was zero.”

Angels and Devils

While true, this story is also an archetype.  It appears in many forms we are all familiar with: The Wizard of Oz; music lyrics; the Bible; and so on.  What I like about the version above is that it’s particularly relevant in these times of financial hardship and uncertainty about the future.   It helps us realize that sometimes what we think we need most is really an illusion, preventing us from seeing how we can be living right now the life we want for ourselves in the future.

Quite often in American society, the illusion happens to be money or time.  But it’s different for all of us.  For many it’s an immature egoic construct — an emotional mechanism that served our needs as a child (e.g. I have to clean up my room for my parent to smile and play with me), but which fails to mature and keep pace with our lives.

One form of emotional immaturity is overgeneralization — we unconsciously apply childhood mechanisms to situations which are more nuanced.  Just because I had to achieve a clean room for my parent to reward me with one particular outward demonstration of love, doesn’t mean that I now must achieve career success to deserve the love of my spouse and friends.  Yet so often, that’s what it boils down to, doesn’t it?  Or if not exactly that, some variant in which parent, spouse, friend is replaced by society, church, God, child, and so on.

These immature emotional constructs become scripts which we memorize as a child and we shorten into mantras that go through our minds subconsciously thousands of times a day, even as we get older.  Cleaning my room yields affection, but I wanted to play with my toys instead, so I got scolded and it made me feel bad, and maybe that means I am a bad person and I don’t deserve love, and if I want to not be bad and thus deserving of love I need to do something that I don’t want to do or that I fear, and so I don’t do it, which brings me back to that feeling bad about myself, and so on.  Ultimately, it just becomes mantras: I’m a bad person; I don’t deserve love; I’m afraid of failing; etc.

Mantras are the emotional version of the music that gets stuck in our heads and reverberates.  They color how we feel in the moment and how we perceive the world around us.  They can be devils or angels, depending on their form.  They lead to self-fulfilling prophecies.  If we believe we need more money, then indeed, we need more money.  But the devil is always in the details.  It’s not the money that’s the problem, it’s the conflict between money and “more”.  Money is finite, more never ends.  The illusion is complete and we become blinded to the more nuanced reality.

The Safety Net

We are born with infinite possibility to create the lives that we want and it is only through the scripts, mantras and illusions we spin that we become distanced in time, space, and emotionally from most of them.  We are all both angels and devils, the distinction itself being just an illusion we create.  And just as we can become reconnected to the world of abundance by presuming it exists, we can protect ourselves from becoming fallen angels with a safety net.

The key is, remembering that the safety net is equally as real as the illusion.  The yin does not exist without the yang.  The need for more money does not exist without the perception that what we need is different than what we already have.

Alice shared her story with me two months ago, and I have been telling it to many people since as my way of paying it forward.  If you feel inspired by her story, please pay it forward by sharing a safety net story of your own in the comments.  It doesn’t matter how trivial you feel it is, others will be inspired by it who you won’t ever know about.

Alternatively, if you know someone who needs inspiration, tell them the safety net story they need to hear most, right now, whatever it is.

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Hypothesis: Vaccination is something that is good at the societal level but bad at the individual level.  That is, it is a tragedy of the commons.  You want all your neighbors to get vaccinated so they don’t pass on the germs to you, but there is enough risk from the vaccination process (at least for certain ones) that you’d rather not do it yourself.

The mathematics of the commons tragedies suggests that there are two ways out.   One is to change the payout/incentive structure, in other words, make the vaccine’s less risky to the individual, or at least change the perception of the individual risk (as the Wired article suggests).  The problem with manipulating perception is, what if you’re wrong?  The marketplace of ideas can be efficient, crowd wisdom can be greater than individual understanding.  And even in the cases it’s not, the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain alive.

The good news is there’s another way out.  Just as with the Prisoner’s Dilemma, you can iterate.

What would this mean in the case of vaccines?  It would mean that as a society we must recognize that if we “play the game” enough times we will find that not vaccinating as a whole leads to poorer outcomes to the the individual.  That means YOU.  And thus it becomes recognized that taking the “I’m not going to vaccinate” stance is immoral, or at least unacceptable.  Sure there will be “defectors”, just as there are people who don’t vote.  But those who don’t vaccinate — just like those who don’t vote — do so quietly.  They don’t shout it from the rooftops or let their neighbors know.  And sometimes they even lie and say that they did vote when they really didn’t….

The level of defection is inversely proportional to the level of transparency — the less your neighbor can find out about your behavior, the more likely you are to defect.  Thus, we solve the dilemma by making public the record of everyone who vaccinates, along with their address.  Those not on the record are assumed to be defectors.

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The basic result is that overconfidence is beneficial in proportion to two factors: (1) the size of the payoff relative to the cost to play and (2) uncertainty about competitor capabilities.  There are two optimal strategies for a population, overconfidence (which minimizes unclaimed resources) and underconfidence (which minimizes conflict costs).  Unbiased self-perception is always dominated by these strategies. However, an overconfident person can successfully invade an underconfident population while the reverse is not true.  So overconfidence is the stable solution.

The direct implication is that resources get destroyed.  It is optimal for an individual to be overconfident, but then he ends up fighting with other overconfident individuals, which imposes costs.  If you think about it for a minute, this is a pretty important fundamental problem.  All of the big societal decisions we face have potentially big payoffs (or avoidance of costs), but it’s really unclear who has the best expertise to make a recommendation.  So we get a bunch of “experts” telling us they are absolutely right.

Note that if it is public knowledge how “good” someone is, the “overconfidence premium” goes to zero.  This is why forcing experts to make public predictions is so important.  Then you can figure out how good they really are.

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What I found most interesting was the quote in the title of this post, said by the prosecutor in the Lakhani case.  This was his justification for why it was okay to have the U.S. military supply Lakhani the weapon that he was convicted of illegally dealing.  (If you listen to the story you will learn that Lakhani had been making promises to the informant of being able to procure weapons for a long time and he’d been unsuccessful on his own).

While it seems on the surface that “bad people do bad things” — i.e. that’s how bad things get done, they require a bad person to do them — renowned Stanford psychology professor, Philip Zimbardo, has a different theory, which he uses to describe what happened in Abu Ghraib:

Click here to view the embedded video.

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The old philosophical theory says that reason is conscious, can fit the world directly, is universal (we all think the same way), is dispassionate (emotions get in the way of reason), is literal (no metaphor or framing in reason), works by logic, is abstract (not physical) and functions to serve our interests. Language on this view is neutral and can directly fit, or not fit, reality.

The scientific research in neuroscience and cognitive science has shown that most reason is unconscious. Since we think with our brains, reason cannot directly fit the world. Emotion is necessary for rational thought; if you cannot feel emotion, you will not know what to want or how anyone else would react to your actions. Rational decisions depend on emotion. Empathy with others has a physical basis, and as much as self-interest, empathy lies behind reason.

This is part of a brilliant article by cognitive science and linguistics pioneer, George Lakoff (emphasis mine).  His argument about what needs to be done to right the health care reform ship — and more generally in his administration — is to stop denying the above reality and craft a communications strategy that will achieve the (undeniably logical) goals:

As for language, the term “public option” is boring. Yes, it is public, and yes, it is an option, but it does not get to the moral and inspiring idea. Call it the American Plan, because that’s what it really is.

The American Plan. Health care is a patriotic issue. It is what your countrymen are engaged in because Americans care about each other. The right wing understands this well. It’s got conservative veterans at Town Hall meeting shouting things like, “I fought for this country in Vietnam, and I’m fight for it here.” Progressives should be stressing the patriotic nature of having our nation guaranteeing care for our people.

A Health Care Emergency. Americans are suffering and dying because of the failure of insurance company health care. 50 million have no insurance at all, and millions of those who do are denied necessary care or lose their insurance. We can’t wait any longer. It’s an emergency. We have to act now to end the suffering and death.

Doctor-Patient care. This is what the public plan is really about. Call it that. You have said it, buried in PolicySpeak. Use the slogan. Repeat it. Have every spokesperson repeat it.

Coverage is not care. You think you’re insured. You very well may not be, because insurance companies make money by denying you care.

Deny you care… Use the words. That’s what all the paperwork and administrative costs of insurance companies are about – denying you care if they can.

I was a fan of Obama’s unification approach when he was campaigning and was hopeful that his opponents would come around and see this as sincere (which I believe it is). At this point though, that sincerity is being abused by a small, selfish and powerful elite who are not interested in seeing the right to adequate health care universally applied.  And these opponents are masters of the communications strategy Lakoff is suggesting, which is what has been fueling the town hall screamers, tea-baggers and FOX News “pundits”.

It’s impossible to unify with people who are not interested in unification.  And I agree with Lakoff that if the administration adopts the necessary communication strategy to complement its logic and sensibility, it will have a much better chance of getting back support of the conservative public for the goals we should all be unified on.

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If you’ve listened to this the whole way through (which you should), I’m curious as to how it will affect your habits, if at all.  And why?

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hat tip: Annie Duke’s mom

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Alexander (a pseudonym) is an Air Force interrogator with a criminal investigation background.  He was brought in as part of team trained to employ “new school” interrogation techniques in Iraq, post-Abu-Ghraib. These techniques focus on building rapport with prisoners and gradually winning their trust, instead of trying to establish dominance and control over them. The book is about his unit’s successful search for Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, the head of al-Qaeda in Iraq.

There isn’t a lot of door-kicking, badass-combat action. It’s a psychological workplace thriller.  But the fact that I lived through the context of how important the mission was makes it rather heart pounding. It’s fascinating how well the new school techniques work on supposedly hardened al-Qaeda operatives and how resistant the old school practioners are to using them. The story also provides some insight into how primate politics can infect even the most clear and critical missions. In fact, a crucial advance in the search comes from Alexander bucking the political order at great risk to his career.

There’s some nice humor too.  “Randy” is the ex-Special-Forces commander of the interrogation unit. He has a reputation as something of a badass.  So a “Randy-ism” will occassionally and anonymously appear on the whiteboard.  My favorites:

“Jesus can walk on water, but Randy can swim through land.”

“When Randy wants vegetables, he eats a vegetarian.”

“Little boys check under their beds at night for the bogeyman.  The bogeyman checks under his bed for Randy.”

Next time I have to interrogate a prisoner, I’ll have some idea of what to do.

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