Decision, Intuition & Perception

So here's the presentation I've done in FGV today. Unfortunately, we didn't get it on tape, so no sound. I hope it may still be of some value for those interested.

A new commentary piece in Behavioral and Brain Sciences

Here's a new commentary on a target article, to appear in Behavioral and Brain Sciences. The full piece is available through email.

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Dynamic sets of potentially interchangeable connotations: A theory of mental objects

Alex Linhares

Abstract: Analogy-making is an ability with which we can abstract from surface similarities and perceive deep, meaningful similarities between different mental objects and situations. I propose that mental objects are dynamically changing sets of potentially interchangeable connotations. Unfortunately, most models of analogy seem devoid of both semantics and relevance-extraction, postulating analogy as a one-to-one mapping devoid of connotation transfer.

Wonderful, wonderful, tech world!

Let's just bridge the digital divide.

On the consciousness test

Here's Aeolist on the "consciousness" test:

People tended to rate the toddler as more conscious than the corporate executive, and to rate Google as more conscious than the robot. I can understand the former, even if I disagree with it, but the latter is just puzzling. Perhaps it comes about from the way we talk and think about firms as though they were conscious actors? But don’t we think about robots that way just as often? Perhaps when we think of robots, their wholly mechanistic character is more salient, whereas firms have a less intimate association with mechanism.

Well, the way Google was presented was, to me at least, quite "conscious" (or perhaps I should say quite self-controlled, since that's the test I did). (Of course I fully agree that it is preposterous to say that the toddler is more conscious than the corporate guy. People seem to be "punishing" him for his greed, I guess.)

Back to Google vs the robot. I had studied Kismet some years ago and to say that it has any understanding or "empathy" is to fall for the Eliza effect. The same thing happens to Google, the search engine. However, in the description of Google I had, it mentioned the company, headquartered in California, with 9400 employees, and so on. So even if I think the search engine does not exercise any self control whatsoever, I think it is fitting to say that the company does.

The real issue I see here is: can we ascribe psychological terms to companies? (or to other agglomerations of psycho-beings?)

First, in a realpolitik sense, we should ask: can we not? Because analogy and metaphor pervades our language and concepts and thinking, can we not think that Google is worried about privacy, lawsuits, etc? We are bound to think in these terms. It's just not something that we'd have a choice, I guess.

But is Google really worried about Microsoft, in the same sense that people are worried about weight loss? Is the United States really worried about Iraq? Is it becoming consciously concerned with global warming? Is it fitting to apply psychological terminology to aggregations of people? Would there be a real psychological phenomena in there?

My first take would be 'no'--there is no collective mind, and those are metaphorical uses. Yet, as we understand more and more about cognitive processing, the resemblances between a person's thinking (a "real" psychological event) and a group's (a "metaphorical" one) seem to be enormously striking. But that's just my first intuition; I can't spell out the argument precisely. Maybe later.

A historic day for the internet! Or did I say hysteric?

Intuition is about "situation understanding", and that situation understanding has to do with how one perceives things. How one classifies events and the stuff in them. I've commented previously on the initial perception of the iPod. But when I did that comment I did it in hindsight. So, I guess it is only fair to analyse a controversial event that just happened today; and is making the alpha geeks crazy about it. Some, like me, say it's historical, full of hope; others say it's hysterical, full of hype. A couple of years from now and we'll know who's right.

Google made an announcement, quoted in full here:

Google Introduces New Business Version of Popular Hosted Applications

Mountain View, Calif. - February 22, 2007 - Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) - today introduced Google Apps Premier Edition, a new version of Google’s hosted services for communication and collaboration designed for businesses of all sizes. Google Apps Premier Edition is available for $50 per user account per year, and includes phone support, additional storage, and a new set of administration and business integration capabilities.

Google Apps™, launched as a free service in August 2006, is a suite of applications that includes Gmail™ webmail services, Google Calendar™ shared calendaring, Google Talk™ instant messaging and voice-over-IP, and the Start Page feature for creating a customizable home page on a specific domain. More than 100,000 small businesses and hundreds of universities now use the service. Google Apps Premier Edition now joins Google Apps Standard Edition and Google Apps Education Edition, both of which will continue to be offered for free to organizations.

"Procter & Gamble Global Business Services (GBS) has enrolled as a charter enterprise customer of Google Apps, a successful consumer product suite now available to enterprises. P&G will work closely with Google in shaping enterprise characteristics and requirements for these popular tools," said Laurie Heltsley, director Procter & Gamble Global Business Services.

"So much of business now relies on people being able to communicate and collaborate effectively," said Gregory Simpson, CTO for General Electric Company. "GE is interested in evaluating Google Apps for the easy access it provides to a suite of web applications, and the way these applications can help people work together. Given its consumer experience, Google has a natural advantage in understanding how people interact together over the web."

Google also today announced that all editions of Google Apps now include Google Docs & Spreadsheets™. In addition, Google Apps now supports Gmail for mobile on BlackBerry™ handheld devices.

"Businesses are looking for applications that are simple and intuitive for employees, but also offer the security, reliability and manageability their organizations require," said Dave Girouard, vice president and general manager, Google Enterprise. "With Google Apps, our customers can tap into an unprecedented stream of technology and innovation at a fraction of the cost of traditional installed solutions."

Features unique to Google Apps Premier Edition include:

• 10 GBs of storage per user – Offers about 100 times the storage of the average corporate mailbox, eliminating the need to frequently delete email.
• APIs for business integration – APIs for data migration, user provisioning, single sign-on, and mail gateways enable businesses to further customize the service for unique environments.
• 99.9 % uptime – Service Level Agreements for high availability of Gmail, with Google monitoring and crediting customers if service levels are not met.
• 24x7 support for critical issues – Includes extended business hours telephone support for administrators.
• Advertising optional – Advertising is turned off by default, but businesses can choose to include Google’s relevant target-based ads if desired.
• $50 per user account per year – Simple and affordable annual fee makes it practical to offer these applications to everyone in the organization.

In addition to Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk and Start Page, all editions of Google Apps now include:

• Google Docs & Spreadsheets – With this addition, teams can easily collaborate on documents and spreadsheets without the need to email documents back and forth. Multiple employees can securely work on a document at the same time. All revisions are recorded for editing, and administrative controls allow organizations to define limits on document sharing. According to custom analysis of Nielsen//NetRatings MegaPanel released this week, 92 percent of users of online productivity tools last October used Google Docs & Spreadsheets, making it the number one product in its class.
• Gmail for mobile devices on BlackBerry – Gmail for mobile devices provides the same Gmail experience – such as search, conversation view and synchronization with desktop version – on BlackBerry handheld devices for users of Google Apps. Gmail for mobile devices joins a list of other mobile options for Google Apps and BlackBerry users that already includes a Google Talk client and a variety of calendar sync tools.
• Application-level control – Allows administrators to adapt services to business policies, such as sharing of calendars or documents outside of the company.

"When it comes to our email systems, our doctors don’t have the time or the budgets to deal with managing technology or defending against spam," said Andrew Johnson, chief information officer, San Francisco Bay Pediatrics. "With Google Apps Premier Edition we don’t have to worry about downloading the latest spam filters or navigating unwieldy servers. This is where we let Google do what it does best, so we can do what we do best – help our patients."

In addition to Procter & Gamble Global Business Services and San Francisco Bay Pediatrics, other early adopters of Google Apps Premier Edition include Salesforce.com and Prudential Preferred Properties in the U.S., as well as Essilor and Mediametrie in France.

To provide more options and value to customers of Google Apps Premier Edition, Google Enterprise Professional partners like Avaya and Postini are developing a variety of solutions based on our APIs, including email gateways, enhanced security, Google Calendar synchronization, third-party integration with Google Talk, as well as offering deployment, migration, and additional support services.

Google hosted applications are available in many local languages, such as French, Italian, German, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Please visit http://www.google.com/a for details on the product, local availability, partners and customers.

Techcrunch called it historical:

[Google's] nearly full-service suite of sophisticated, integrated online services is something of historic proportion. Google’s technological brilliance is only beginning to be recognized. What do I mean by that? I mean that with its powerful algorithms to analyze and contextualize information, combined with its growing catalogue of information to analyze - Google is an epoch defining company. Send the world’s business communication through Google and the machine gets a whole lot smarter.

The New York Times said it challenged Microsoft:

Google is taking aim at one of Microsoft’s most lucrative franchises.

On Thursday, Google, the Internet search giant, will unveil a package of communications and productivity software aimed at businesses, which overwhelmingly rely on Microsoft products for those functions.

The package, called Google Apps, combines two sets of previously available software bundles. One included programs for e-mail, instant messaging, calendars and Web page creation; the other, called Docs and Spreadsheets, included programs to read and edit documents created with Microsoft Word and Excel, the mainstays of Microsoft Office, an $11 billion annual franchise.

Unlike Microsoft’s products, which reside on PCs and corporate networks, Google’s will be delivered as services accessible over the Internet, with Google storing the data. That will allow businesses to offload some of the cost of managing computers and productivity software.

For corporate technology staffs, “we think that will be a very refreshing change,” said Dave Girouard, Google’s vice president and general manager for enterprise.

Yet, among the alpha-geek readers of Techcrunch you can hardly find any positive comment:

What is so innovative here?
with respect marshall, how much hyperbole!
I’ve said it before: Google haven’t innovated for 2-3 years now.
As others are saying, this is just more “me too”

When the 1st iPod was launched; Apple’s fanatic fans were downplaying it enormously. Now it seems that everyone around here thinks Google hasn’t done much (to say the least). To me, this is something of groundbreaking historical proportions, and people are not understanding that because, well, they’re making bad analogies. There are many different things to consider in this announcement:

(i) Google’s guarantee of 99.9% uptime. This does not mean 0.01% downtime. It means that Google is willing to back up the promises they make; and that, in the long run, will bring confidence to business. I’ve been frustrated once or twice about contacting my bank, after some years long relationship. But that frustration for their “downtime” does not necessarily mean changing provider.

(ii) The IT guys (that would be laughing in a comment above) should really be the first ones to start crying. This is more an attack on them than on MS, and in the economic inefficiency of every single company having to buy a bunch of servers, maintain those, update them, and of course hire hire and hire a bunch of expensive people to run email & calendaring.

(iii) To compare this to ms-office is to misunderstand the whole thing. It’s like saying an iPod can’t write songs; can’t compose music. The minor announcement that docs & spreadsheets were now integrated is not even close to the real issue. They are neat tools, great for collaboration. I can imagine a manager in the morning emailing people about some problem they face and the whole group putting their views on a doc, instead of emailing opinions and arguments back and forth and back and forth and back and forth; by the end of the day a collaborative effort brings up a rough sketch. That is a productivity gain.

(iv) The docs & spreadsheets integration is a MINOR issue. The MAJOR issue is that, soon, we should see blogger integration, google reader, a presentation-sharing tool, picasa web photos, wikis, and a whole lot more I don’t remember at this precise second. All of them improve productivity, and, when taken together, when a click away, and after people have learned how to use them, then the productivity boost is really huge.

To say that this is an attack on microsoft office and therefore it will fail, is, to me, very myopic, just like those iPod skeptics that thought “this thing will never sell”.

Yet, years from now, Ms-office might just be a tool for “polishing” up documents. Then again, not all documents need to be polished; and, moreover, other companies that integrate their offices with Google’s tools might just make it a whole lot better.

When thinking about tech, we can’t just think where it is; we need to think where it’s going. What the potential is. This thing today was of incredible historic proportions. Not because of what’s on offer–though the offer is already great; but because it will only get better. People will be more productive AND costs will be saved. Laugh as much as you want; but think again when you start to see big corporations jump into Google’s efforts, both to improve productivity, and to save dozens of millions of bucks per year.

The IT guys in the backrooms better stop laughing and better get prepared.

Neuroeconomics and connotation explosions

Oh, wouldn't it be great to see a neuroeconomics study of "tax cut" versus "tax relief"? Get a bunch of subjects to discuss "a tax cut program"; another, similar bunch of subjects to dicuss "a tax relief" program, everything else remaining constant, and watching how those brains respond to each scenario?

I'm more than willing to put money that there's a large disparity in brain processing between these cases. I'd also bet that, as the topic becomes rather dull people converse more and more about either a "tax cut" or a "tax relief", this disparity will diminish.

My final bet is that a pool of economics Ph.D.s should exhibit much less disparity between the framing of "cut" and "relief" than subjects with a Ph.D. in Greek Mythology.

Any takers?

George Lakoff on the analogies of Conservatives and Liberals

A giant once told me some unfavorable things about George Lakoff's immense ambition: "Lakoff thinks he has discovered the fundamentals of all things". With books about Cognitive Science, Philosophy, Mathematics, and Morals last time I checked, all claiming to be radical departures from the establishment, it is hard to argue against that claim. Yet, Lakoff has to be taken seriously. His basic tenet (in Math, Philosophy, CogSci etcetera) is that people, unlike the enlightenment philosophers view, do not think in literal terms but through analogies and metaphors. This is a point with which we of course agree wholeheartedly.

We have written about mechanisms for creating subtle associations previously. How do these almost invisible associations and connotations affect policy and the public? For a first, policies with strongly loaded connotations such as "tax relief" become, after strong reinforcement, "common sense". And at this point, the avenue becomes wide open for policy-makers; for even if you argue against "tax relief", the mere activation of the concept is an argument for it.

Interestingly, he also points out contradictions in the mindsets of people in both sides of the political spectrum. How can conservatives be "pro-life" and for the death penalty? How can liberals be "pro-choice" and against the death penalty?

What is perception?

What happens in those fleeting moments when you perceive things or people or situations?

It was one of the best days of my life. I was doing my PhD, surrounded by great, incredibly intelligent, and interesting, and funny, friends; working for a whole year at UNICAMP, I had the best girlfriend ever, and my computer program was finally finished: that important paper would soon be out for publication and life coudn't be better. So after a whole day at the lab, me and my girlfriend decided to go watch some movie at the cinemas.

So my mind is going through many good things, with only one very small annoyance. Cris, my girlfriend, is taking forever to get ready. Women! Anyway, she wants to stop at her apartment, then to go to mine, before heading to the movies. Being a smart man, I say what we always do: of course. So we go and the whole ordeal takes such a loooooong, long time, at her place.

Then we go to my place. I was in a hurry, because we were late to the movie. She couldn't care less; but you know how women are. Anyway, m y perception of the situation, before going in the door, was that this was "just another regular, good, day". That perception would change in one second.

As I opened the door of my apartment, something looked strange. It was all very subtle and fast. The lights were out and the apartment was dark, but, in less than a single second, before I turned the lights on, I felt sheer fear. Someone was there, inside the apartment. This person was facing me directly. As soon as I turned the lights on, we would have to face each other. I could only hope that they would rob whatever they wanted and leave us alone. In a fraction of a second, my new perception was of the worst kind. Our lives were at stake. But, once again, that perception would change in the next second.

I turn on the lights, ready or not to deal with the situation. And there are lots of people. Not just one, but lots of them. And they scream "surprise"! Ohh yes, ohh gosh, Ok, yes, It's my birthday, and Oh god, everyone's here! So in another glance, my perception changes radically, again, to one of an unexpected surprise party. She gave the keys to someone and that explained how they were in. She took loads of time so they'd get ready. I can still remember the momentary collapse of the ideas of a robbery, and of going to the movies, vanishing away. Nothing like that was going to happen anymore. The perception now is: time to celebrate.

Everyone has been through these kinds of rapid shifts in perception. We don't control it. It happens automatically. There is nothing we can do, in fact, to control how we perceive situations given the speed with which our psychology processes situations. So what goes on in those fleeting moments when we perceive things or people or situations? What is perception, after all?

Perception is categorization. It is the automatic process of categorizing things, people, and situations.

So we have categories in our minds. These categories came from previous experience. We have a number of categories acquired through life. Let's say, at any point T in time, some person has C(T) number of acquired categories. But here's the thing: scientists have counted the number of stimulus coming from our senses at any point in time: we have 11 Million different stimulus bombarding us with data from our 5 senses. How do we go from 11.000.000 stimulus (which we have never seen combined before and will never see combined again) to a relatively small number of categories? This is what Hofstadter discovered: we have an innate ability to make categories "dance", by making analogies to previous situations. We see very different things as "the same" by analogy processes. As Hofstadter put it, the "inexact matching between incoming stimulae and previous categories is analogy-making par excellence".

Let me give an example that I find interesting. Take the iPod mp3 player--it is a hit product that "saved Apple Computer". On the day the first iPod was announced, people did not have the category "iPod" in their minds, so they had to resort to previous categories... making all kinds of analogies you can imagine. In fact, I decided to collect some analogies on the iPod, to use someday in a paper in Marketing. Here are some:

THE iPod is:
"the razor or the blade?"
"the latest educational tool"
"the villain"
"the gold standard"
"the remote [control]"
"apple of our eyes today"
"game changer"
"the network"
"undisputed king"
"lifestyle accessory of the new millennium"
The "Kleenex" of mp3 players
"the new floppy [disks]"
"the Xerox machine of consumer electronics"
the biggest rabbit in [...] Steve Jobs hat right now
the coca-cola of music players
The avenue for customers to go to Apple stores
the PDA
The most guilty
"as a mobile phone" [future prospect]
"as a canvas for expression"
"as a bootable drive"
"as a security threat"
[video iPod] "as a marketing tool"
"as a data repository"
"as a unit of measure" [in terms of money, height, and so on; e.g., how many iPods to circle the Earth?]
"as key for security"
"as a platform" [such as the Solaris platform]
"as a legislative force"
"as an Ebook"
"as a presentation device"
"as a business tool"
"as a phone phreaking device"
"as a portable DVD player"
"as a learning tool"

Crazy, right? But that's perception at it's core... understanding something in terms of other, better understood things.

Now, does this affect decision-making? Do people change their decisions because we are analogy machines? Well, think about this: if someone thinks that the iPod is the "lifestyle accessory of the new millennium" or "a canvas for expression", isn't that person more likely to make a buying decision than someone that says it is "a security threat" or a "Trojan horse"? I think so.

Politicians have, of course, known that analogies embed decisions, analogies embed responses from people. If a politician says that "Quebec will become a small boat in storming seas", they are pushing people away from the idea of Quebec independence. If they say that "Quebec did nothing to deserve life in prison", they are arguing for independence of Quebec. And so we go.

Decision-making theories that do not have analogies at their core will, quite simply, fail, at one point or other, to explain what humans do.

Seqsee diary has a great post on this, see also Hofstadter's papers here and here.



Above is the 2006 Stanford Presidential Lecture by Hofstadter in QUICKTIME format; below you can have it in REALPLAYER format). Internet explorer users may need to enable Active X.