Shadows from the Past

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Feelings in relationships as we now understand them run on a double track. We react and relate to another person not only on the basis of how we consciously experience that person, but also on the basis of our unconscious experience in reference to our past relationships with significant people in infancy and childhood - particularly parents and other family members. We tend to displace our feelings and attitudes from these past figures onto people in the present, especially if someone has features similar to a person in the past.

An individual may, therefore, evoke intense feelings in us - strong attraction or strong aversion - totally inappropriate to our knowledge of or experience with that person. This process may, to varying degrees, influence our choice of a friend, roommate, spouse, or employer.

We all have the experience of seeing someone we have never met who evokes in us strong feelings. According to the theory of transference, this occurs because something about that person - the gait, the tilt of the head, a laugh or some other feature - recalls a significant figure in our early childhood. Sometimes a spouse or a superior we work under will provoke in us a reaction far more intense than the circumstances warrant. A gesture or tone of voice may reactivate early negative feelings we experienced toward an important childhood figure.

Armand Nicholi, The Question of God

Starbucks to open its first sign language store in Japan

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#GOODNEWS

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Starbucks Coffee is opening its first store in Japan with baristas who know sign language. The store will open on Saturday in Kunitachi, a city in the western part of Tokyo. Nearly the entire staff of 25 is deaf. This will be the fifth "signing store" for the company Others are located in Malaysia, the US and China. Read more here.(image from Starbucks)

Keep Asking Questions

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A few years ago, I got a call  (on my communication device) from a Pittsburgh author named Chip Walter. He was co-writing a book with William Shatner (a.k.a Kirk) about how scientific breakthroughs first imagined on Star Trek foreshadowed today’s technological advances. Captain Kirk wanted to visit my virtual reality lab at Carnegie Mellon. Shatner stayed for three hours and asked tons of questions. A colleague later said to me: “He just kept asking and asking. He doesn’t seem to get it.” But I was hugely impressed. Kirk, I mean, Shatner was the ultimate example of a man who knew what he didn’t know, was perfectly willing to admit it, and didn’t want to leave until he understood. That’s heroic to me. I wish every grad student had that attitude.

Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture

The Risk of Independence

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All life itself represents a risk, and the more lovingly we live our lives the more risks we take. Of the thousands, maybe even millions, of risks we can take in a lifetime the greatest is the risk of growing up. Growing up is the act of stepping from childhood into adulthood. Actually it is more of a fearful leap than a step, and it is a leap that many people never really take in their lifetimes. Though they may outwardly appear to be adults, even successful adults, perhaps the majority of “grown-ups” remain until their death psychological children who have never truly separated themselves from their parents and the power that their parents have over them.

M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

Availability Bias

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Have you ever said something like, “I know that [insert a generic statement here] because [insert one single example].” For example, someone might say, “You can’t get fat from drinking beer, because Bob drinks a lot of it, and he’s thin.” If you have, then you’ve suffered from availability bias. You are trying to make sense of the world with limited data.

People naturally tend to base decisions on information that is already available to us or things we hear about often without looking at alternatives that might be useful. As a result, we limit ourselves to a very specific subset of information.

This happens often in the data science world. Data scientists tend to get and work on data that’s easier to obtain rather than looking for data that is harder to gather but might be more useful. We make do with models that we understand and that are available to us in a neat package rather than something more suitable for the problem at hand but much more difficult to come by.

A way to overcome availability bias in data science is to broaden our horizons. Commit to lifelong learning. Read. A lot. About everything. Then read some more. Meet new people. Discuss your work with other data scientists at work or in online forums. Be more open to suggestions about changes that you may have to take in your approach. By opening yourself up to new information and ideas, you can make sure that you’re less likely to work with incomplete information.

Rahul Agarwal writing in Built in

 

The best advice I ever got

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The advice that sticks out I got from John Door, who in 2001 said, “My advice to you is to have a coach.” 

My argument was, How could a coach advise me if I’m the best person in the world at this?  But that’s not what a coach does. The coach doesn’t have to play the sport as well as you do. They have to watch you and get you to do your best. 

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt quoted in Fortune Magazine

 

What know-it-alls don’t know

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Know-it-alls can be insufferable, and now there’s new evidence that they know less than they’d have you believe. Researchers from Cornell and Tulane universities found that self-proclaimed experts are more prone to “overclaiming”—essentially, pretending to have extensive knowledge of something they’re clueless about. In the study, 100 volunteers were asked to rate their level of knowledge in various subjects, such as biology, literature, and personal finance. When quizzed on 15 different economic terms, the people who fancied themselves financial gurus were far more likely to claim they were familiar with phenomena such as “pre-rated stocks” and “fixed-rate deduction” that were actually complete fictions. Tests on the other topics revealed similar results—even when participants were warned that some terms would be phony. “Our work suggests that the seemingly straightforward task of judging one’s knowledge may not be so simple,” researcher Stav Atir tells Science Daily, “particularly for individuals who believe they have a relatively high level of knowledge to begin with.”

The Week Magazine, August 7, 2015

Try Doing Less 

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When you stop doing the things that make you feel busy but aren’t getting you results (and are draining you of energy), then you end up with more than enough time for what matters and a sense of peace and spaciousness that constant activity has kept outside your reach. We need to identify what not to do. But this determination can’t be random. It must be methodical and evidence-based. For instance, if you’re looking to connect more with your children, you might list a few specific memories or “wins” when you really felt like you were being the best parent you could.

Often the things we think we “must” do are simply because we always have done them or others around us do them and we think we should, too.

Kate Northrup writing in the Harvard Business Review