Really nice interview in New Scientist last week with evolutionary biologist Marlene Zuk about she calls "paleonostalgia"
"You see this attitude in what can be
referred to as "palaeo-nostalgia" – the notion that we were all better
off before agriculture, or civilisation or the industrial revolution.
It's not to say life has been unmitigatedly getting better. But it's
more helpful and accurate to see that all organisms are constantly
evolving. There has been no point in our past when we were perfectly
adapted to our environment.
I'm not dismissing the idea that you
need to look at our evolutionary heritage to think about what's best for
us health-wise. But when you start plucking out pieces in an oddly
specific way, you can run into trouble."
Smart stuff and worth remembering: it's all too easy to conjure up some time in the reimagined past - on some open grassy savannah when things were ticketyboo and we were perfectly suited to the world in which we live (since when, we've lost something). Things were always in motion.
One of the brilliant things about our super social species is our ability not just to learn from other people but to outsource the cognitive load to those around us (and those around them and out on beyond). We use the brains, the memories, the feelings, the perceptions and the know-how of others all fo the time.
Great talk yesterday at top Creative Social Sessions by Bertolt Meyer about how technology is increasingly enhancing our human nature and some of the dilemmas this introduces...
Here's a great little example of how technology is helping enhance and stretch our natural abilities. Is this a social-media enabled prosthetic?
Nice example here of an experiment which supports kinds of social diffusion of positive feelings through a population that Nick Christakis and James Fowler described in Connected
Nice spot by that charming man, Will Humphrey - a piece by Franz de Waal in the WSJ describing how much we underestimate the cognitive powers of our animal cousins. Have a read.
Denying the connection just messes with our thinking: you know that old saw "Monkey See Monkey Do" - turns out we humans are much better at copying than they (or other primates) are and our (Western) obsession with originality is not the real gift; copying is what makes us.
This is just one of many ways in which we try to separate ourselves from them, when in fact who and how we are has very strong roots in them.We are - for good or ill - a Super Social Ape and not the unique and inevitably successful creature we imagine we are (as the late Stephen Jay Gould pointed out, if we were to re-run the tape of evolution, it's far from clear that we'd end up as we are or as successful as we are).
Nice piece in this week's Economist on Britain's love affair with gambling and lotteries in particular (HT @lauradavies24)
Lovely descriptions of how - in the face of systematic randomness (yes, past performance has no impact on future performance) we twist ourselves inside out to make choice easier - we use shorthands to pick winners (including following "expert" advice or familiar or "special" numbers) And how we ignore the simple rule that the more familiar the number the smaller the share of any (randomly-allocated) winning ticket.
As we've discussed before, herd-thinking is particularly tricky in financial decision-making - you often need to stand back and consider the facts of the matter (however hard and unnatural that is!)
But at the simplest level, those of us who play the lottery - the "numerically challenged" as some would have us - often do it because everyone we know's doing it...
Not sure it adds anything to the stuff we've previously pointed at e.g. here, here,here, here, here, here and of course here
And of course it provides a good challenge to Behavioural Economics, forcing us to think about behaviour change above the level of the individual (which is where BE stops)
That said, this stuff is always - as G would say - awesome (literally)
Interesting piece covered in a lot of mainstreampresstoday by Alberto Aceri of Bristol Uni and team about trends in words used in english Language novels over the last 100 years reveals about us:
" Britain's literature has grown less emotional since the 1960s, but American literature has become more so. Overall, English-language literature has used far fewer emotionally-charged words over time, but American writers have bucked the trend: They've ramped up their use of "mood words" in the past few decades as Brits have grown more stoic." With the exception of "fear" words (as the red line above indicates).
The ebb and flow of sentiment is also clear:
The point being that even really simple analyses of data that's lying about (or observations that can be turned into data) can reveal important changes in our culture
NB THIS may or may not (as the authors and commentary in the Atlantic both observe) reflect how we experience things: e.g. "the socially-conservative
mores of Elizabethan England led to an increased demand for writing ''obsessed with romance and sex"" BUT it certainly reflects the culture and the products of that culture. And it's free!
So today's challenge is this: what can you do with the offcuts of data you have lying around to reveal what's going on beneath?
Nice piece here with Dave Brailsford, the "architect" of British Cyclng success
2 interesting thoughts emerge :
1. he uses the "chimp" metaphor (like "Monkey Brain") to denote the non-human bit of ruminating consciousness which distracts us from the "flow" states that athletic performance depends on (i.e. by denigrating the human bit to animal).
2. he talks about the way doping spread through cycling but without pathologising individual dopers (quite hard given the hullabaloo surrounding it recently) or - if I understand him correctly - in blaming the thing thing.
So it is 10 years ago this week that I first formally presented what I called the HERD hypothesis in written form (see above) at the Market Research Society in Birmingham (for which incidentally I shared the Best New Thinking Prize). Since then - together with a number of brilliant folk - we've managed to evolve and "operationalise" the basic insight at the heart of this paper, with 2 more books, prizes from the nice people at WPP, ESOMAR and Emerald Insight along the way, a host of well-liked articles and some fascinating conversations and experiences with people I'm not sure I'd have met otherwise.
It hasn't all been plain sailing - I have endured any number of pats on the head ("interesting but not really mainstream"), some strange challenges ("OK for kids marketing & poor people - maybe abroad?") and occasionally some hostile responses ("we don't believe that monkey shit round here" being my favourite).
But gradually, over those 10 years things have changed: not least thanks to the explosion of "social media" which has made arguing for the importance of social influence in shaping human (and consumer behaviour) so much easier (praise the Lord for Mr Z for this at least).
And collaborating with brilliant people - especially Professor Alex Bentley - to turn the analytic techniques developed across the social sciences into practical tool for marketers and decision-makers has been an unexpected but wholly positive pleasure. Back in 2007, we first developed a 4 box map based on patterns to be found in
And now 10 years on, a number of folk have picked up and recycled
the work we've been doing (which is exactly how things work and spread),
mostly (but not always) attributing sources. So if for example you find someone presenting one of these* over the next few days and weeks,...
...you'll know what to think, won't you?
Yes, the HERD effect is at play...
Thank you all - Alex, Mike O'B, Hugh, Jason, Ray P, Gareth K, Kevin K, Kevin D, Nick K, John K, Alex B, Susan G, Tom E, Audrey, John W, Graeme W, Wendy, Angela, Sair, Mark B, Mark H, John, Fiona, Stephen, Giles, Ben, Geoff, Paul, Liz, Judie, Colin, Chris, Roddy, Peter M, Gemma, David, Bob B, Bob P, Claire, Anne & Merry.
Sorry I can't be at MRS to celebrate the 10 years anniversary but I'm sure it'll be fabulous!
*BTW the version here first developed by Alex & I in 2010 with Anomaly & Sony Europe
If you're in London Tuesday next week, here's a great event from the lovely people at Creative Social built around some really stimulating folk who "probe" the future for the rest of us...[like memories of the future]