Miscommunication made easy: email

I suspect there are numerous problems with this study of undergraduates, but it is amusing:

Wired News: The Secret Cause of Flame Wars

According to recent research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, I've only a 50-50 chance of ascertaining the tone of any e-mail message. The study also shows that people think they've correctly interpreted the tone of e-mails they receive 90 percent of the time.

... The researchers took 30 pairs of undergraduate students and gave each one a list of 20 statements about topics like campus food or the weather. Assuming either a serious or sarcastic tone, one member of each pair e-mailed the statements to his or her partner. The partners then guessed the intended tone and indicated how confident they were in their answers.

Those who sent the messages predicted that nearly 80 percent of the time their partners would correctly interpret the tone. In fact the recipients got it right just over 50 percent of the time.

On the one hand undergraduates are notorious about leaping to conclusions and one wonders how incented the writers were to do their job well. Sarcasm and irony are extremely hard to communicate.

On the other hand, I admit to having written many emails that were misconstrued. And those are only the ones I heard about. The researchers may be about right. Some general guidelines for corporate email:

1. Assume anything sent by email will be read by the entire world.
2. Don't do irony, don't do sarcasm. They're hard to do. Mark Twain was misunderstood.
3. Keep email short. As a rule if it's more than three paragraphs send a document attachment. (People read documents differently from email, in particular they often print them. Seems to help.)
   
4. You can try emoticons, but remember #2. Humor doesn't work well either!
5. If you ever pause for to wonder if your email is impolitic, it is probably lethal. Delete it at once and burn the hard drive.
6. If it takes too long to craft the email, phone instead.
7. Configure your email program so that mail is not sent immediately, but is instead queued for sending. There've been quite a few times I edited something I'd sent to that queue.
8. Assume your email will go to the wrong person and that they'll misinterpret it. This is commonplace with Outlook thanks to its braindead systems of at least 3 (4 I think) completely distinct and inconsistent methods for autocompleting email addresses.
   

I have more email "best practices" at work. I'm going to try and dig up my references and add them here.

Update 2/20/06:

Steve Robbins wrote an excellent article on 'email best practices' for the Harvard Business Review. The key takeways are very clear subject lines (revise them!) and being very careful about using the CC option. The person who should take action should be the primary subject, key interested parties the CC line. (If there's no action required, why the heck are you sending the email?). Prune the CC line on longer messages.

When in doubt use forwarding rather than CC. Never BCC unless it's to yourself.

Better decisions without the prefrontal cortex

Ok, I thought all this business about snap judgment decisions was nonsense. I regret to state that maybe I was wrong about that. This research study is seriously interesting:

BBC NEWS | Health | Sleep on it, decision-makers told

A Dutch study suggests complex decisions like buying a car can be better made when the unconscious mind is left to churn through the options.

This is because people can only focus on a limited amount of information, the study in the journal Science suggests.

The conscious brain should be reserved for simple choices like picking between towels and shampoos, the team said.

Psychologists from the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands divided their participants into two groups and devised a series of experiments to test a theory on "deliberation without attention".

One group was given four minutes to pick a favourite car from a list having weighed up four attributes including fuel consumption and legroom.

The other group was given a series of puzzles to keep their conscious selves busy before making a decision.

The conscious thought group managed to pick the best car based on four aspects around 55% of the time, while the unconscious thought group only chose the right one 40% of the time.

But when the experiment was made more complex by bringing in 12 attributes to weigh up, the conscious thought group's success rate fell to around 23% as opposed to nearly 60% for the unconscious thought group. [jf: so they did better with more attributes? That sounds flaky.]

... the study found that people can think unconsciously and that for complex decisions unconscious thought is actually superior.

The team argued the problem with conscious thought is that the brain can only focus on a few things at the same time, which can lead to some aspects being given undue importance.

Lead researcher Dr Ap Dijksterhuis said: "The take-home message is that when you have to make a decision, the first step should be to get all the information necessary for the decision.

"Once you have the information, you have to decide, and this is best done with conscious thought for simple decisions, but left to unconscious thought - to 'sleep on it' - when the decision is complex."

Jonathan Schooler of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver told Science the study built on evidence that too much reflection could be detrimental in some situations.

"What may be really critical is to engage in [conscious] reflection but not make decision," he added.

Well, there are a few things that seem flaky. The success rate with 12 variables seems unnaturally high. Still this is not entirely implausible. The seat of the conscious mind is roughly the prefrontal cortex, and the human PF is a massive bio-hack with a kludged connection to the rest of the brain. In particular the PF has real problems with multi-variable analysis. On the other hand, the older brain solves these problems all the time (social dynamics, hunting, etc). So it might make sense that it could this well.

In retrospect, smart test takers use techniques consistent with this theory. We read the whole test and scan the hard problems, then go work the easy problems. When you get to the hard problems, the answers may have already come to mind.

I wonder if this goes some way to explaining why some children and adults with poor prefrontal cortex functions (low measured IQ, severe ADHD) may make surprisingly correct decisions given complex problems. If their unconscious reason is less impaired than their PF cortex ...

Alzheimer's: there's not much you can do about it

A recent study found that Alzheimer's onset was very similar in identical twins, irregardless of environmental risk factors. Within the considerable limits of twins studies, that suggests AD onset is genetically controlled. (Note that the relationship may be indirect. Head trauma is strongly associated with AD and is also related to genetically determined serotonin "levels".)

Now another study suggests "education" (brain exercise) does not alter the fundamental disease process:

Bloomberg.com: U.K.

... The new study shows that the brains of more educated people can tolerate changes for longer periods of time, meaning signs of decreased mental agility typical of Alzheimer's disease appear later. When those signs do appear, the disease progresses faster than it does in less educated patients.

``The amount of nerve connections and information hubs are likely to be more numerous and more efficient in people who are highly educated,'' said lead author Nikolaos Scarmeas in his study. ``The subsequent impact is likely to be greater than it would be in less educated brains, because of the higher levels of accumulated damage.'

The "educated" experience the same dementing process as everyone else, but they have further to fall before they meet the diagnostic criteria for dementia. Genes and brain injuries can speed or slow the fundamental dementing process. I strongly suspect the "education" marker is spurious and that IQ is really the primary protective effect, and IQ is probably almost entirely determined by genes and intrauterine environment [1].

So you can mostly relax. There's nothing you can do to slow the onset of Alzheimer's except try to avoid head injuries. Wear a helmet. Don't box or play football.

If there's any hope for folks with unlucky genes, it will come from drugs.

[1] Sure, lots of very good and smart people claim otherwise. I've read their stuff and my personal non-expert opinion is that it's wishful thinking. Nowadays most of the people who make serious claims about environmental impacts on IQ are thinking of the intrauterine environment.

No XP booting on MacTel boxes

The Register lays down the line: Why XP will never officially work on a Mac. Actually the title is misleading, the author it should read "unofficially and practically" work on a Mac. Apple could make XP work, but it nobody else is likely to provide a dual boot option.

The bounty guys tried, but this one looks bad.

iPod review

Apple - iPod

1. None of the 3G accessories work: FM tuner, dictation device, remote control, nada.
2. no firewire sync
3. chargers and cradles are useable
4. no remote, no charger, no case, no firewire cable -- great margins!
5. substantially slower sync

Costly hotels and awful clock radios

On occasion, and neither by preference nor choice, I stay in an expensive hotel. Most of these places show odd market failures of one kind or another, but the most striking one for me is the clock radios.

They are usually incomprehensible and remarkably cheap. This one featured some Timex branded monster that plays CDs (who carries CDs these days?) and looks like it was assembled by a justly resentful Chinese prisoner. The prize, though, is the alarm. Despite two disgusted efforts, I couldn't figure out how to set the darned thing. It reminded me of configuring the Hayes codes on the first generation of error-correcting modems.

I can only guess the Hotel manager has never actually stayed in her hotel.

Even if they were the same price, the alarm clock alone would send me to the Residence Inn.

Naughty but nice - Philip Morris' Arise

Kudos to Monbiot, writing for the Guardian. He exposes a wonderful tobacco company scam -- using a front company called Arise to secretly fund European "scientists" to write about joys of tobacco addiction:

Guardian Unlimited | Science | Exposed: the secret corporate funding behind health research

... In 1998, as part of a settlement of a class action against the tobacco companies in the US, the firms were obliged to place their internal documents in a public archive. Among them is the one I came across last month. It is a memo from an executive in the corporate services department of Philip Morris - the world's largest tobacco company - to one of her colleagues. The title is "Arise 1994-95 Activities and Funding". "I had a meeting," she began, "with Charles Hay and Jacqui Smithson (Rothmans) to agree on the 1994-1995 activity plan for Arise and to discuss the funding needed. Enclosed is a copy of our presentation."

This showed that in the previous financial year Arise had received $373,400: $2,000 from Coca-Cola, $900 from other firms and the rest - over 99% - from Philip Morris, British American Tobacco, RJ Reynolds and Rothmans. In 1994-95 its budget would be $773,750. Rothmans and RJ Reynolds had each committed to provide $200,000, and BAT "has also shown interest". She suggested that Philip Morris put up $300,000. Then the memo becomes even more interesting.

"The previous 'Naughty but Nice' Mori poll proved to be very effective in getting wide media coverage. The exercise will be repeated this year on the theme of 'Stress in the Workplace' ... A draft questionnaire was already submitted to [Tony Andrade, Philip Morris's senior lawyer] and [Matt Winokur, its director of regulatory affairs] for comments." "We decided to hold" Arise's next conference in Europe, it continued, because of "positive European media coverage". Philip Morris had appointed a London PR agency to run the media operation, set up Arise's secretariat and help to recruit new members. Arise's "major spending authorisation and approval would be handled by an 'informal' Budget Committee involving PM, Rothmans and possibly RJR and BAT".

It was a very successful venture, generating tons of friendly European press. I cannot help but admire the sheer evil genius Philip Morris so often shows. They have the marketing department from Hell (perhaps literally?). It's like watching particularly effective black widow spider devouring its failed mates.

One Professor Warburton has finally had his reputation completely savaged. A small bit of justice long delayed.

Cheney hunts domesticated birds

Shooting a hunting partner? Dumb maybe. A dementia marker maybe. But not a crime.

Blasting domesticated ducks and calling it hunting? That's a crime.

I wonder how Cheney hunts deer? I'm thinking tying them down first.

No decency: Guantanamo episode XIV

Once upon a time the phrase "have you no sense of decency" had some power. Nowadays the answer would be a redirection into an unrelated domain and some comment about breaking eggs.

BBC NEWS | Middle East | No surprises in the war on terror:

Let's recapitulate briefly. According to the US Department of Defense, only 8% of the prisoners at Guantanamo were al-Qaeda fighters, and only 5% of them were captured by the Americans themselves.

The overwhelming majority of the others were handed over to the Americans by people who could reasonably be called bounty hunters.

The United States knowingly elected a government that has no sense of decency, no sense of shame.

Nike.com: worst web site in the history of the universe

Nike.com is all flash based, back buttons don't work, links don't work, search engines don't work. It's slow and painful and just plain stupid. How can such a wealthy company produce such a trashy site? And what does that say about their business future?

Kinsley on the the Islamic rage cartoons

I hadn't read much of value about the cartoons of Mohammed, so it's worth pointing to an interesting commentary: The Ayatollah Joke Book - So, the Prophet Mohammed walks into a bar … By Michael Kinsley. Kinsley seems to be saying that this is indeed a fundamental conflict between freedom and fundamentalism. He's probably right. And yet ...

It's a crowded world these days. There are over 8 billion of us, and the low cost of communications means we're all in each other's faces all the time. Maybe someone has the theoretical right to pronounce the rightness of English rule in a Quebecois bar on St. Jean Baptiste day -- but it's hardly polite or wise. Today we're all sitting side-by-side in the same bar.

Sometimes we just have to fight. We are genus Pan after all. Mostly though, we should do what I do when some idiot cuts me off the freeway. I drop way back and give him lots of room. He's just declared what he is, and I need to respect his limitations.

Same thing here. The Muslim world is not a happy, successful, or vibrant place these days. More success may yet come, but for now we need to respect limitations.

In defense of religion - an atheist speaks

Ok, so technically I'm not an atheist really. Our universe is weird enough that I can imagine it having fallen off some assembly line of a "prior" megaverse, rolling off to the discard heap on the side. I guess that would make me agnostic.

But I'm close enough to atheist for most purposes. So it might seem odd to my three regular readers that I should now be standing in defence of religion, particularly when I so enjoy reading the work of assertive atheists like Dennet (Dissecting God), Pharyngula, and Dawkins. I even have a few rationalist credentials of my own, and no-one would think me a friend of 'ID' or its ilk.

Defend religion, however, I do. As I wrote in a rather unpopular comment on a Pharyngula blog (hey, it's not my fault the universe is fundamentally nihilistic!), reality is overrated. I mean, really -- these proselytizing atheists need to get out more. Everyone dies, humanity's prospects are poor, pain and suffering are almost universal, grief is always an eyeblink away, and even our local universe appears to be destined for a long dismal demise without hope of any sort. The Fermi Paradox is not encouraging.

Oddly enough, despite believing all this, I'm actually a reasonably happy person. My life is sure challenging (though others face far greater challenges), but I like it. Mostly I just deny reality; I think humans are hardwired to do that. So the roller coaster is running for a brick wall -- all the more reason to savor the ride. I suspect Dawkins and Dennet are rather similar.

Where I part company with the proselytizing atheists is I don't think everyone's made the way I am. ("Thank God" my friends would say.) If it takes religion to be happy, purposeful, and to keep despair at bay, then I say go for it. I'd prefer religionists chose Buddhism or Christianity over modern American Yahwism (the religion of the American right), but I admit I don't have a lot of influence there.

Now Dawkins would claim religion is the root of much evil. Maybe. But really, we'd have to study a control group without religion. I suspect our chimpanzee nature is really the greater root of evil.

Some of the most compassionate and kind people I know are quite religious, or very spiritual. I like those people and I'm not about to attack something very important to them. In any case, I greatly enjoy most religious writing, art and architecture -- any relationship to "reality" is irrelevant. The works are real, their authors were real.

But, some atheists might say, don't we have the "right" to reciprocate when Bush et al imply atheists can't be true Americans? Ok, I make an exception for Bush. He's immune to our criticisms anyway. Otherwise, however, the answer is "no". Just lie low, take the scorn, and look for allies among the non-dominant religious groups and among agnostic humanists like me. Atheism is a fundamental threat to the religious person because it attacks a central defence against despair, the converse is not true. Religious ideas and work can be very attractive to the atheist, they are not threatening in and of themselves. I sometimes even enjoy listening to radio evangelists, if only because some of them really do address the concerns and issues of 'the Weak'.

It's a harsh and nasty universe. Be gentle. As far as I know, we are all we've got.

From skijor to dog scooter - adapting to global climate change

We used to have a husky-collie mix who loved to skijor. Molly's rolling in celestial dead fish these days, but as of a week ago we have a blue-eyed black furred mongrel pup (Kateva). Kateva's been looking for her harness since she arrived.

Alas, snow is a rare thing in these parts nowadays. Yeah, I spent last night shoveling off the rink, but there's not enough to ski on, and it won't last anyway. Skijoring is very last millenia for most of America. We need something else for the snowless sled dog.

Enter the Dogscooter. Actually, this labor-of-love vendor site also sells carts and sulkies. I discovered it in a Google search, for canine chariots, only to belatedly realize that I'd featured it on my old skijoring page about 5 years ago. It looks like great fun, and all for less money than a decent pair of inline skates. Kateva may not see a lot of snow, but she'll still get her miles in ...

A brief education in modern genetics

If your last genetics class involved wrinkled peas, you need to read Pharyngula's (a distant colleague actually, he's a tenured U of MN prof and I'm a very part-time adjuct faculty person there) modern genetics 101: evolution of a polyphenism.

Clinical practice hasn't changed much in the past 20 years, but genetics has seen a few updates ...

Power corrupts: the tyranny of the lowly immigration officer

Lowly bureaucrats in the immigration services, emboldened by increased powers and stressed by the threat of harsh punishments, are abusing "foreigners" (emphases mine):

Seized With Heavy Hand at Border, for Paperwork Errors - New York Times

...Though there are no statistics on such cases, the lawyers say they are seeing harsher treatment in situations involving paperwork errors or minor infractions. A political climate more hostile to foreigners, fears of being faulted for leniency and a lack of coordination among immigration agencies, they say, are leading officers to go overboard in cases that fit the government guidelines for prosecutorial discretion.

"I'm desperate," Emily Arroyo, the mother of the second grader, said last week, after prosecutors refused an immigration judge's suggestion that they drop the two-year-old deportation case against her son, José Arroyo Rodas. Instead, they demanded that she buy him a one-way ticket to Canada by next week.

"I'm American — they're making me leave my country, too, because of course I'm not going to let him go alone," said Ms. Arroyo, a hairstylist raised in Guatemala, who calculates that she has spent $10,000 in legal fees trying in vain to fix José's paperwork problem. But on Wednesday, hours after this reporter asked United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in Washington for comment about the case, an agency spokesman, Marc Raimondi, said that prosecutors reviewing the matter had found that it met the guidelines for prosecutorial discretion. "A dismissal recommendation to the immigration judge is planned," he said.

... case like José's only confirms that without exceptional outside attention or high-level intervention, rigidity prevails, said Diane M. Butler, a Seattle lawyer who heads the American Immigration Lawyers Association committee that works with Customs and Border Protection.

Most officers, she said, "are trying to do the right thing" but lack training in how to apply discretion. But, in some instances, she added, officers seem newly emboldened by campaigns against illegal immigration to express their resentment of foreigners by denying or delaying entry whenever possible. She said her business clients reported remarks like, " 'You're just trying to take jobs away from Americans.' "

Other immigrant advocates say that low-level employees often act out of fear. "The people on the front line are told that if they make a mistake, their jobs are gone," said Amy L. Peck, an immigration lawyer in Omaha who heads the association committee that works with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "So that translates into this rigid — what one could also describe as extreme — policy of turning away and not using discretion in cases that scream for it."

Immigration officials combine the power of police, judge and jury. Such power is an intoxicating drug, especially for those with little experience in its use. Low level immigration staff suffer from both the intoxication of power and the fear of punishment for errors -- and errors are impossible to avoid in their job. Being human they have to make mistakes, and naturally they now err towards punishing the innocent.

The story caught my attention, however, because of some personal experiences. Even as a melanin-deficient euro immigrant from Canada I was told by an immigration security official that I was marrying my Yankee girl simply to enter the US (I managed to avoid laughing -- I'm not that dumb). I learned when overseas that there was a sharp rise in quality towards the top of the consular hierarchy, with very smart and capable people at more senior levels and remarkably ineffectual sorts lower down. My family has also run into minor but scary issues when traveling due to our motley family mix (the trick there is to avoid the immigration worker who's ethnicity matches the non-euro children -- and to carry documentation beyond a full set of passports).

The solution is to put more high level, higher paid staff in place to provide backup and make judgment calls. The folks at the bottom will need to err on the side of rigidity and suspicion, but they need to have experienced senior staff on call at all times to help make corrections. In the meantime, never ever look cross-eyed at any immigration or transportation official.