cognitive bias: trapped in the wild!

This morning I was driving home from Brookline (where street signs appear to be illegal, rrr), Google Maps directions by my side. While I was only tangentially familiar with the way that Google wanted me to get home, I was totally confident in the directions - but when I saw a right-hand turn that I could make onto a street from which I was 99% sure I could get home, I took it.

That's not surprising. But the thing is that I assumed that it would be shorter. I had no reason to think that - in fact, I had some reason to not think that, given that it hadn't been suggested by Google, and once I made the turn I knew that it was going to take longer and be more annoying to get home.

Also, for people who are into cognitive biases, a fun game would be to have someone tape them on your backs, and go around asking people questions to see which one you are. I think the SDS people would dig it.

Customer Donttouchpoints

When I worked in branding, the idea behind customer touchpoints was, as far as I could tell, the more the merrier. Last week I had visited a chichi lingerie store to get fitted for a bra, and I bought some things. (you didn't realize this was a sex blog, did you?) Yesterday I received a fancy thank-you card, with a long handwritten note from the woman who helped me, and her card attached.

Did I appreciate this customer touchpoint? No. I felt annoyed that I had wasted my time dealing with it (I had opened it thinking that there might be a coupon inside), and my first thought wasn't "how nice," but "oh, hello ethos-inspiring customer touchpoint." I realize that you're not supposed to give your address if you don't want stuff sent to you, but it got me thinking about unwanted customer touchpoints - I can't be the first person who absentmindedly forked over their address but didn't want to receive things.

I wonder if anyone behind a brand ever thinks "what our customers want is to be left alone." Likely not today, with the branding=storytelling paradigm. The brand is you. You are the brand. Being left alone by the brand would make your life less rich, less full, less you.

jab, cross!

Seen today on the Green Line:

Your tax dollars pay for keeping this car clean. Please do your part (ital. mine) by removing all personal belongings upon exit.

a plug a day...

One thing I like about my friend Mark is that he has cool ideas about actual things.

Also ideas about ideas, for example, this , heretofore unimplemented.

news news news

After a couple of weeks of discussion, I was offered $2400 to do a job. I replied with the math that showed that it was more like a $4000 job. This was yesterday morning, and I haven't heard back, and it feels auspicious.

I think there has to be something behind "no news is good news" more than "if you haven't heard otherwise, there is still hope." Is there a bias that bad news comes quickly? Given our comfort with the status quo, no news is good news. I don't know enough about semantics to explain this (by which I mean "make myself clear"), but no news = good news seems to be different than saying that no news has a property that makes it good news the way that a cardinal has a property that makes it red.

Also, pragmatically "good news" seems to me primarily like it is used to negate existing bad news. Good news, then, is not no news.

And then put into some real-life contexts, "no news is good news" just means that the absence of X can be interpreted in a positive manner. Which would inidicate that X is negative - "news is bad news." So no bad news is good news. Why do I do this to myself? I wish I remembered more formal logic - I don't even remember if "no news" would be illustrated with (~backwards E) or (~upside-down A). But there you have it friends. No bad news is good news. You heard it here first.

hey

Things are looking up, poorhouse-wise: I'm editing a book on architecture and thought, and now have a part-time job as a tutor in the Writing Center of a local arts & design school. I'm looking forward to it - the designers I've worked with have often had an almost organic relationship to their work, saying things like "this almost wants to be black" and "it feels like (noun)." Mostly "it wants to be X." I like that, because I both believe and don't understand it, and I'm interested in seeing how arguments get constructed around it.

The Writing Center is part of the Critical Studies {amorphous segment of college}, so I don't know how often I'll be helping people write about their own work, but we'll see.

Plus maybe discounted classes. And just being in an academic environment again, reading flyers pinned up on walls is like crack to me.

old woman's rant.

You know those plastic containers of deli meats, (for ex.) shaved, oven-roasted turkey? There's a lid and then the turkey is in a sealed plastic pouch? In mine, there's a little sticker on the sealed plastic pouch that says "Easy Open." And it was far from easy to open. And my frustration was only compounded by the mocking sticker with the dodgy credentials! If it had said "open," I would not have been confused, I would have known where this opening was meant to happen. The addition of "easy" does nothing - since I've already bought the turkey, it's not a selling point. No, the only thing it can do is make me feel bad.

Thanks, Shaw's brand Shaved Oven Roasted Turkey.

P. said that maybe the sticker should read "Easy for most people to open."