Constrained Bliss Point

Here’s a really cool instance of life hacking I heard the other day from Brian Rowe:

First, an introduction. When you’re at a restaurant, and you pay by credit card, how do you decide what to tip? That is, how do you choose an exact amount that’s within the acceptable range? Two common strategies are 1) to choose a round number for a tip and add it to the (not round) total, or 2) choose a value for the tip that will make the final amount a round number.

I have heard that one way is less secure, though I can’t remember which, because the person running the bill can input another amount and you wouldn’t know just from checking your credit card statement. I don’t know how credible this threat is. But now I happen to have a solution.

You can use a checksum for your checks. Leave a final amount such that the last digit is equal to the sum of all the digits preceding it. For example, instead of paying $42, leave a tip such that the amount you pay is $42.06. This method is straightforward, awesome, and helps curtail credit card fraud.

Why do people place so much value on consistent systems of beliefs?

In a formal system, sure, you want consistency. If a formal system is inconsistent then you can use it to prove anything — it’s effectively useless. But our minds are not formal systems. Humans don’t exist simply to prove things (unless you’re a mathematician I guess).

Let’s say you believe two contradictory axioms. What’s to stop you from voluntarily relaxing one or the other as the situation demands? I suppose then you aren’t being “principled”. Your choice may seem arbitrary, and lead to arbitrary results. But it could be that you don’t know what you should believe, until you’re faced with a difficult situation that stretches your belief system. Life is full of gray areas. Sometimes you just do what you think is best, and reform your belief system later to compensate.

Many consider hypocrisy a vice. I used to feel the same way, until I questioned that assumption and couldn’t provide a good justification. Let’s say I get mad at a house mate for not cleaning up his dishes, and then I go ahead and leave my dirty dishes in the sink. He has every right to get mad at me, assuming he doesn’t like dirty dishes left in the sink. But should it be any worse that I’m violating my own rules, in addition to his? I am not so certain.

I’m very willing to hear counter arguments, though.

The second amendment never made sense to me. Not the reason behind it, I mean the grammar itself. It seems like a run-on sentence, or one with too many parts — though I guess removing some commas solves the problem.

I also found it curious that it was right after the first amendment. Most important, it seems, is freedom of speech, of religion, and of assembly. But guns are a close second. Maybe the framers were seriously worried about bears.

But guns were the way of protecting yourself back in the good old days. Nowadays I’m not so sure. But if you really want to protect yourself from the government, I say a smartphone is a much better investment. When everyone’s phone is a camera that can instantly post pictures to the intertubes, a government responsible to the people has to watch its back more often.

I know that it’s not quite the same thing. Maybe the point of the second amendment is physical security, so that we should also be protecting crowbars. But if you look at the beginning of the Bill of Rights as: 1) you can say what you want, worship how you want, and assemble how you want, and 2) you can defend yourself in those rights, it seems sensible that the second amendment should cover PCs, digital cameras, and assorted Twitter-accessible devices.

This post was shamelessly inspired by Mr. Munroe’s xkcd comic entitled “Legal Hacks”.

Living in a pretty little bubble for the summer, I’ve begun to miss the intellectual stimulation of being at a university surrounded by nerds. So, while I’d rather the summer not end too quickly, I am looking forward to being part of a horde of academics come Fall.

It struck me, talking to a friend from RPI, that the types of nerds I encounter at Georgetown will be markedly different from the nerds found at Rensselaer. While (I imagine) it will be easier to find econ nerds, I have a feeling that there will be far fewer techies. And, you know, internet geeks and movie buffs and mathematicians.

So I’m trying to develop a list of  “necessary topics for nerditry,” at least inasmuch as I myself define nerditry. Note that they are necessary conditions but not sufficient conditions, since there is a certain je ne sais quoi about nerds that can’t be defined. And I’m not looking for  “A nerd is X” or “A nerd does Y” either — think of this as: “if I wanted to emulate a nerd, what would I need to know?”

Nerds need to be familiar with at least one and preferably many esoteric academic topics very well. So the first condition isn’t a particular topic, it’s any topic, provided you can speak with authority and are actually interested in it. Next you need to know a bunch of trivia. Again the particular topic isn’t important, though movie quotes and internet memes are sure bets. A nerd should be comfortable with maths. If someone starts talking about sets or normal distributions or Laplace transforms, you should know what they’re saying. Maths provide a useful language for discussion, much like economics, so learning the terminology of your nerd group is vital.

I suppose all nerds are different. I wonder if a set of necessary conditions for nerditry could ever be formulated. This is harder than I had anticipated.

I am a nerd for grammar, among other things. I think English has somewhat complex grammatical rules for a reason, and that systematic mistakes in usage should not be tolerated. I’ve prided myself on knowing the corner cases of language ever since I became self-aware.

For example, farther and further are mostly interchangeable, but they are subtly different. For example, farther should be used with measures of distance, whereas further is for measures of degree or time; further is also used as the comparative form of far. Although Wiktionary tells me that experts have never made a fuss about this distinction, I tend to err on the side of grammar nerditry.

Songs are different than regular usage, though. Grammatical constraints are often relaxed or broken for artistic effect or because of the exigency of other types of constraints. It used to irk me when artists would use the improper form of lay or lie in their songs, until I thought of how weird it would sound to use the correct form. At the same time, I have the utmost respect for artists who navigate treacherous grammatical straits properly and elegantly.

Quick grammar lesson: to lay is transitive, as in “I lay the book down on the table.” To lie is intransitive, as in “I lie down on the couch to take a nap.” The confusion arises because the past tense of lie is lay. I lie / I lay / I had lain. I lay / I laid / I had laid. I’ll try not to judge you for getting this wrong.

A recent example is The Bird & The Bee’s Love Letter to Japan: “and now, all my heart I will lay down precisely at your feet”. The present tense of to lay. The transitive one. Perfect.

I recently got a Kindle 2 as a gift, which is perhaps the most fabulous electronic device I’ve ever owned. I’ve read more in the past two days than I have in the previous two weeks. First I filled it up with three dozen journal articles on ecological and experimental economics topics (fun, I know). They are way easier to read on the e-ink screen than on LCD, even if the formatting gets fouled up sometimes.

Then I checked out the Amazon store (wirelessly), which is similarly fabulous. I purchased Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments for a mere 99 cents — take a moment to note the fabulousness of the public domain. Got some samples of David Allen’s new books. Then my thoughts of new and exciting content to load up led me to Creative Commons-licensed books. It was downhill from there.

I tracked down The Future of Ideas, The Public Domain, and Viral Spiral, by Lawrence Lessig, Jamie Boyle, and David Bollier, respectively. “Wow, this is great,” I thought. “What other fabulous Creative Commons books can I download for free and read on my Kindle?”

Last night it came to me: Cory Doctorow is a CC junkie. I’ve wanted to check out Little Brother for months now, but given my budget constraints on book purchases, it hasn’t made the cut yet. I avoid reading fiction since the opportunity cost of reading time is so high, and non-fiction is far more “valuable”. I mean, if I want fiction, I can just watch hulu, right? Firefly is an amazing show after all. But I digress…

I threw Little Brother on my Kindle, and read a few pages. Oh that Cory Doctorow. He drew me in with his witty foreward, talking about how CC is wonderful and re-convincing me why books should be given away digitally. So I started reading the first chapter. And then I was hooked. It’s so frigging interesting. It doesn’t even feel like fiction, which I guess is scary that a dystopian future isn’t so far off. But I couldn’t stop reading. And now I should probably be doing other work, like returning emails or starting on Chemistry, but no, I’m going to go read Little Brother some more.

Stupid Cory Doctorow with his brilliant writing and his fascinating story line and his awesome glasses.