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June 21st, 2012Top StoryThe Costanza Principle: Empower Your Inner Contrarian and Make Better DecisionsBy Thorin Klosowski
Generally speaking, humans aren't very good at quickly gauging the quality of our choices. We use shortcuts, fall back on stereotypes, and make choices based on limited amounts of information. This often works for our minor, day-to-day choices, but we're inadvertently limiting our scope and not considering a wide variety of worthwhile options. In an episode of Seinfeld called The Opposite (see video above), George Costanza decides to toss his gut instincts to the curb and instead consider radical alternatives to what his instincts tell him to do—and it works. Obviously there's a significant difference between a sitcom and real life, but Costanza's opposite principle is more constructive than you might think. To illustrate my point, here are a few cases when it's a good idea to doubt your brain. When "What Comes Naturally" Isn't Always In Your Best Interest
Instant gratification is not always a bad thing, but more often than not we prioritize the moment over the future. We convince ourselves that our instincts are right when they're not. The myth that your body "tells you what it needs" when you're craving something is a good example of this. It's a blatant trick your brain plays on you in order to get a reward. Instant gratification also comes in the form of protection. Your brain treats uncertainty as a threat, and your natural reaction may not be in your best interest because it's trying to protect you from something it doesn't need to. It might just be that you're worried about the uncertainty of disappointment or embarrassment. In George Costanza's (clearly absurd) case, avoiding perceived risk led him nowhere. By considering an alternative (described as "the opposite"), he was rewarded with a date and a new job. Solution: Learn to Differentiate Between "Feeling Right" and "Being Right"It might seem negligible, but learning to differentiate between "feeling right" and "being right" is key. The first a knee-jerk reaction to a situation based on your feelings; the second is a quantifiable truth. As science writer David DiSalvo points out in his book What Makes Your Brain Happy and Why You Should Do the Opposite, knowing the difference requires recognizing that difference:
Certainty is two-fold. On one hand, it's all about the facts (we'll get to that more in the next section); but it's also about emotional forecasting. You might not take a small risk because you feel like you know what would happen, but in reality humans are terrible at predicting the future, and you often don't take your own personality into account when making choices. Considering alternatives is a way to find out if a choice is really the best one. Your History and Self-Perception Has More Influence Than You Think
Think of a stereotype threat like this: all your life people have been introducing you as "the quiet one" or "the shy person." Internally you might interpret those introductions as a way to act even when you don't feel like they apply to you. Subsequently, you base decisions on this idea—you remain quiet during a dinner or don't speak up in a conversation—even though it's not what you want to do. Photo by Quinn Dombrowski. Solution: Challenge Your Personal Myth (Do the Opposite)This is where Costanza's opposite approach best applies. In order to challenge your "personal myth" you have to do (or at least imagine doing) the exact opposite of what you normally do. As science blog Big Think points out the first step is knowing what you do and that that behavior can be changed:
The second step is to take a little action and give new things a try. The next time you're faced with a social decision (preferably one without horrible repercussions), considering looking at the alternative. You may be pleasantly surprised with the results and if nothing else you'll learn a little about an opposing view of the world. Your Viewpoint Is Incredibly Limited
The availability heuristic is essentially a decision making shortcut that means "if you can think of it, it must be important." This is when you add emphasis to details because you've heard of them. For instance, if you've seen a lot of stories about zombie-like behavior, you're more willing to accept the fact that zombies are real. Both confirmation bias and the availability heuristic boil down to one thing: you prioritize one idea because everything else seems unlikely to you. This leads to close-mindedness which can cause bad decisions and block creativity. Photo by Kevin Bowman. Solution: Reverse Your Assumptions to Understand the Counter PositionYou have to accept that you don't know all the facts and what you do know is probably skewed based on your perception of the events. One way to do this is reverse your assumptions to see new ideas. Psychology Today offers one system to do this:
When you reverse your assumptions you often find new ideas along with new viewpoints. This might include ways to solve creative problems, see other points of view on political issues, or better understand an opinion you don't agree with. It's not about changing your mind. It's about finding the other possibilities that exist and making a choice with more variables. The idea here isn't that you go all out and do the exact opposite of everything (unless your disposition is really that close to George Costanza), but to consider the alternatives of your default behavior. If you're anything like me you'll be surprised at how often you're completely wrong about decisions, risks, and your own perception. Our brains trick us in all types of different ways that we didn't cover above and most of the time we never notice it happening. Have you ever done the exact opposite of your usual behavior with successful results? Share your experiences in the comments.  |
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June 21st, 2012Top StoryWhat Are The Best Innovations In Gaming? The Ones That Let Me Walk Away From the Game.By Kate Cox
But one major reason I am able to play so many more games now than I could ten or fifteen years ago is because the games themselves have changed. One little innovation at a time, they've gotten more accessible. It's not the dumbing down of gameplay that so many long-time and hardcore gamers fear. Rather, it's an emerging sense that games should fit my life, rather than making me reshape my world around their demands. So what are the two best innovations in gaming? What are the functions that have made me, and millions of others, able to play more? I can play more because I can walk away. Pause and save have made me a more avid gamer. Pause for just a moment...Pause is not a new function. We've been able to halt the action during segments of player control since Mario first strolled jauntily into our living rooms. But the "segments of player control" is the key phrase there. I like dialogue scenes in games, when they're good. I hate when my phone rings, or something else in the house needs my attention, and I miss the dialogue entirely. If I'm playing Mass Effect and someone needs my attention while I'm shooting or wandering around, I can pause my game and shift my focus. But if it's the middle of a high-drama scene? I really hope a dialogue choice will come up soon, so at least I can let the game hang out on its own, frozen in a moment of indecision. The ability to pause a game during a cut scene is probably my favorite of all the innovations I've seen in the games of the last few years. Sometimes, you just need to stop for a moment. It has nothing to do with skill or with control, though sometimes for sanity's sake, a break is the best thing. But whether a non-interactive segment of a game lasts for 90 seconds or 90 minutes, sometimes you just need to stop the action right now and go deal with something else immediately. The doorbell, the phone, a crying child, a suspicious "thump" followed by a drawn-out howl from the cat's last known location... the demands of the physical world have to trump gameplay, often. That's just how it is. And while the demands of adulthood make the need for a pause ability glaringly clear to me daily, I might actually have reaped more benefit from the ability to pause cut scenes back in my youth than I do now. I strongly doubt I was the only gaming child to have many a conversation like this in their past:
If I could have hit a single key at any time, and paused any game in progress no matter what was going on at the time, I could have avoided a great deal of adolescent strife. The more we can halt a game in progress, the better off all future generations of gamers will be. Save that one for meSometimes, the neighborhood loses power, or the cat steps on the switch in your power strip. Sometimes your game crashes or, worse, your system does. Sometimes, something else comes up and you need to walk away from a game not just for the next ten or twenty minutes, but for the day. My spouse and I recently played Xenogears, an older game that uses the save points model. And some of those save points were awfully far apart. And when your system crashes between save points, you can end up repeating an entire evening's worth of gameplay. I've walked away from more than one game in my life after losing a day's play. Some things are worth doing once, but not worth repeating. I understand the technical limitations that led to the convention of save points, in older games. In fact, if I'm playing a title nearly as old as I am, I find myself grateful to be able to save at all. I used to leave my NES on for weeks at a time if I was working on a game I had no way to save. I'm amazed it never overheated. But in the era since data storage space has become inexpensive and plentiful, I am glad that for the most part, saves have increased to go with. In most PC games I can create a quicksave at any point during play, then shut down and walk away. Console games I've played tend to be slightly less accommodating with player-created saves, but many have autosave features that kick in often enough to prevent me from regularly repeating areas I'd finished. At the worst, I end up repeating 30 or 40 minutes' worth of gameplay, rather than two or three hours' worth, or more. It's one thing to backtrack and repeat an area or a boss fight (or both) because you lost. We learn from our failures: next time, take a different strategy and do it better. But having to repeat content because of circumstances beyond your control? It's enough to make a player never come back. Being able to save any time actually makes me much more likely to take on a more challenging game. I have the time to play, but I don't have the time to devote a whole weekend to repeating myself. If I know that failure at attempting something difficult won't punish me by making me repeat hours of the less difficult content that came before, I'm more willing to take the risk. And the next great innovation is...I asked some friends and colleagues what innovations had made their gaming lives easier, more fun, or just better in some way. Most of them answered either "pause" or "save," in some form. But one or two were excited about cloud saving, as well. Our gaming future is big on mobility, and our games and their progress are tied increasingly to us, in the forms of accounts and usernames, and less to our devices and hardware. And after a recent sudden hard drive malfunction, I've learned to be grateful for all of the saved games the Steam Cloud rescued for me. In general, though, folks I asked all mentioned developments with one thing in common: flexibility. The ability to skip cut-scenes, as well as to pause them. The ability to change difficulty settings on a game already in progress. The ability to name your saved game files (something I wish more games did). The ability to see how many hours you've put into your progress and into your game. The ability to read an achievements list, if you choose, and get ideas for what may be possible and how hard the designers think it is to do. Not all games are for all players. Nor will they ever be. Nor should they be. But opening up the world of games—in every genre, across every platform—to be as accommodating as possible to as many players as want to make the effort doesn't make a game easier or less challenging. A game can have the hardest systems in the world, and yet still let me hit pause when I need to run to the restroom. A game can challenge me in a hundred different ways, but still let me save my progress and walk away when I need to run an urgent errand. If I want to throw my controller across the room because I've blown the same fight a dozen times, in a dozen different ways, that's a challenging game. If I want to throw my controller across the room because a system hiccup made me lose four hours of progress, that's a hostile one. A game that respects my time, and is willing to let me walk away whenever? That's the game I'll return to. (Top photo: Flickr user iCena)  |
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June 21st, 2012Top StoryThe New York Times Profiled the Brant Brothers Because the New York Times Hates YouBy Drew Magary
Harry, 15, and his 18-year-old brother are the well-spoken product of cross-pollination of the Übermenschen. I want to take this sentence, drag it out into the backyard, and beat it to death with a shovel. That sentence alone justifies every single conservative criticism that the Times exists with its head perpetually up its own ass. These two kids are the product of rich people. No pollination was involved. Terms like "Übermenschen" exist strictly so that pretentious assholes will use them to no effect.
No, they don't. That's wrong. Just last week, I prayed to Jesus that Jaden and Willow Smith would each get hit by a milk truck. No one loves celebrity children. Even Tom Hanks couldn't be stopped from siring obnoxious offspring. What fucking galaxy did this lady emerge from?
There's nothing appealing about that. Everyone loves celebrity children, and you know what? They REALLY love it when those celebrity children live a repulsively decadent lifestyle and won't shut the fuck up about it. Americans can't get enough of that. It's an Übermenschen thing. You wouldn't understand.
It's true. Thank God that we have stumbled upon that rarest of breeds: a privileged set of teenagers tweeting about all the fabulous parties they get to go to that you don't. I can't possibly see how the world would react aversely to such a thing.
That's an astonishing insight. I never would have gotten that kind of tweet from the other 75 million gay people using Twitter.
Now THAT is cross-pollination. Aren't they adorable? Don't you just wanna take them home and douse them in gasoline and watch them BURN until the black flesh is peeling from their skulls?
No. No no fucking no. They aren't refreshing. A rich teenage hipster with Old World pretensions isn't refreshing. In fact, there are entire Tumblr feeds dedicated to eradicating that particular species from the universe.
Those are two centuries.
/vomits on nearby celebrity child WHY IS THIS HAPPENING? Why would the New York Times, an entity that positions itself as a paper that reports on important shit, tell us about these fuckfaces? Does it enrich your life in ANY way to know that one of these kids is tweeting about how awesome Joan Crawford is at four in the morning? Who is this article for? It feels like a fucking paid advertisement.
Of course.
And let us hold a silent vigil now for the concept of the American Boy. It died yesterday, June 2012, crushed under the weight of a lovely 18th century armoire.
And there's nothing more charming than a teenager dropping the names of writers he almost certainly hasn't read. Paris Hilton is nothing more than a tacky European man.
No, they can't.
Notice how this is phrased as something tragic. Oh no! They could have elevated the entire celebreality medium with their love of Troop Beverly Hills, but they've deprived us all! WHATEVER WILL WE DO?!
What growing obsession? I don't see any growing obsession here, apart from my growing obsession to see the Times' Mexican sugar daddy run out of money and watch the paper finally sink into fucking oblivion. The Style section pulls this kind of shit all the time. People are obsessed with the Brants! The home butter churning movement is gaining strength! Floppy disks are waging a minor comeback among the Williamsburg elite! SHOW ME SOME EVIDENCE.
Please note that anyone who refers to themselves as a "writer-about-town" should never be quoted about anything, ever. Here is a description of Blasberg's book: "Classy": If you've ever wondered how to climb the social ladder with grace, how to feel confident in every situation, or even how to make a lasting impression (but not the kind that lands you on the latest "Worst Dressed List")-Derek Blasberg is here, with quotes and secrets from all the socialites so girls everywhere can learn how to have class. Well now, if you're gonna have a writer-about-town take you under his wing, it's that guy. I bet he infiltrates rich families pretending to be the son of Sidney Poitier.
That's not a job! That's your fucking Dad's barn! Doing chores is just doing chores! I hope your prize Arabian took a dump on you.
And there you have it. Two rich teenagers are unsure of what to do with their lives. NEWS AT FUCKING ELEVEN. I don't blame the Brants for being privileged youths. That's all well and good. All teenagers are inherently annoying. No no, I fault whatever fartsniffer at the Times style section found these two to be a cross-pollination of the Uberdouche or whatever the fuck. The Times is disgusting. [Photo via Billy Farrell Agency]  |
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