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The voice is the most expressive musical instrument and it also is the most directly connected to the creative engine. Shouldn’t it be the premier instrument for improvisation? That would be scat. Indeed scat is the most expressive form of improvisation but it is not very popular. A trumpet solo carries us along but scat just sounds weird. Why is that?
The words “scat” and “virtuoso” leave Google cold.
Could it be that a big part of what we appreciate about improvisation is the awesome physical skill that comes from training on an external instrument? Scatting is too easy.
Could it be akin to the uncanny valley? Audiences feel uncomfortable watching animated characters that look too similar to real people. Is scatting too much like singing?
Why are vocalists not using electronics to digitally transform their voice into something that sounds more less like a voice. Then they could utilize the expressiveness and fluidity of the voice and fool the audience into thinking it was an instrument. Autotune?
Would it be more attractive if the scat made sense? Why are there no vocalists who take written lyrics and then improvise them into a melody?
Listen to Clark Terry.
If someone could make a trumpet sound like that they would be heralded as a genius.
via The Browser, This article was thoroughly engaging from start to finish. It’s about a convict who faked insanity so that they would put him in the psycho ward instead of prison. And then he realizes what a huge mistake that was.
Tony said the day he arrived at the dangerous and severe personality disorder (DSPD) unit, he took one look at the place and realised he’d made a spectacularly bad decision. He asked to speak urgently to psychiatrists. “I’m not mentally ill,” he told them. It is an awful lot harder, Tony told me, to convince people you’re sane than it is to convince them you’re crazy.
So he tries to be co-operative in the hospital to prove that he wasn’t really criminally insane. According to his doctors that was a sure sign he belonged in the hospital.
I glanced suspiciously at Tony. I instinctively didn’t believe him about this. It seemed too catch-22, too darkly-absurd-by-numbers. But later Tony sent me his files and, sure enough, it was right there. “Tony is cheerful and friendly,” one report stated. “His detention in hospital is preventing deterioration of his condition.”
Then he tried the opposite.
After Tony read that, he said, he started a kind of war of non co-operation. This involved staying in his room a lot. On the outside, Tony said, not wanting to spend time with your criminally insane neighbours would be a perfectly understandable position. But on the inside it demonstrates you’re withdrawn and have a grandiose sense of your own importance. In Broadmoor, not wanting to hang out with insane killers is a sign of madness.
Eventually his doctors figured out that he had been faking it. But of course the willingness to fake criminal insanity in order to go to the psycho ward is all the more reason to stay there.
But then I read Maden’s next line: “Most psychiatrists who have assessed him, and there have been a lot, have considered he is not mentally ill, but suffers from psychopathy.”…
Faking mental illness to get out of a prison sentence, Maden explained, is exactly the kind of deceitful and manipulative act you’d expect of a psychopath.
A psychopath is basically someone who appears perfectly normal on the surface but lacks normal moral restraints that make people socially fit. And just as it is hard to prove that you are not a psychopath it becomes really easy to conclude that everybody else is one.
My mind drifted to what I could do with my new powers. If I’m being honest, it didn’t cross my mind to become some kind of great crime fighter, philanthropically dedicated to making society a safer place. Instead, I made a mental list of all the people who over the years had crossed me and wondered which of them I might be able to expose as having psychopathic character traits.
Bandwagon effects are hard to prove. If an artist is popular, does that popularity by itself draw others in? Are you more likely to enjoy a movie, restaurant, blog just because you know that lots of other people like it to? It’s usually impossible to distinguish that theory from the simpler hypothesis: the reason it was popular in the first place was that it was good and that’s why you are going to like it too.
Here’s an experiment that would isolate bandwagon effects. Look at the Facebook like button below this post. I could secretly randomly manipulate the number that appears on your screen and then correlate your propensity to “like” with the number that you have seen. The bandwagon hypothesis would be that the larger number of likes you see increases your likeitude.
- At what point do you suspect the impossible? Never-ending shampoo edition.
- Basketball and crack pie.
- DIY Crab Canon. (happy to have found this blog.)
- Bach on the glass harp.
- Miles Davis Septet in Oslo 1972. Check out Keith Jarrett.
- So Pitted!
- Homicide Studies, Theory and Practice.
It’s great, but what’s even greaterer is that they made a transcript of the whole thing and so what would take you an hour to listen to you can read in about 5 minutes. I read it from start to finish. Featuring appearances by Josh Gans, Valerie Ramey, Betsey Stevenson, Justin Wolfers and others.
The transcript is here.
You never know what you will run across in New York – a monument celebrating the Nobel Prize or a fossil shop with a great collection of dinosaur teeth. A couple of blocks further north on Columbus, there is Kefi, a casual modern Greek restaurant. The top floor was already full by 7 pm and we were led to the basement. At first, we were pleased. There were fewer diners and pleasant conversation seemed feasible. Food was ordered and some delicious morsels started to arrive. A warm fingerling potato salad with green beans and feta was delicious, an oregano based dressing adding a depth to the simple ingredients. The spreads for sharing were generic and the Mythonos beer had a funky toothpastey taste that took some getting used to. Some ups, some downs.
Then the trouble started. There is a room in the restaurant basement that can be used for private functions. We could hear a band practicing. We feared the Greek version of a mariachi band marching from table to table demanding payment to depart. It wasn’t that bad but once the private function actually started and the band was in full flow, conversation became hard. I pitied the table right next to the private function room. More food arrived and was quite good if rich. By that point, desert was out of the question and we went elsewhere for a late digestif.
Not sure I’ll be going back.
Here’s the abstract of a recent paper in the Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology.
We examined middle-class Israeli preschoolers’ cognitive self-transformation in the delay of gratification paradigm. In Study 1, 66 un-caped or Superman-caped preschoolers delayed gratification, half with instructions regarding Superman’s delay-relevant qualities. Caped children delayed longer, especially when instructed regarding Superman’s qualities. In Study 2 with 43 preschoolers, with the respective relevant superhero qualities emphasized (i.e., patient vs. impulsive), Superman-caped children tended to delay longer than Dash-caped children. In Study 3, 48 preschoolers delayed gratification after being instructed to pretend to be Superman or a child with the same patient qualities, or after watching a video of Superman, with or without pretend instructions. Invoking Superman led to longer delays and instructions regarding Superman’s qualities tended to lead to longer delays than watching the Superman video. In accounting for the data, we differentiated cognitive transformations of the reward’s consummatory value and cognitive transformations as basic intellectual processes.
Gat glide: Not Exactly Rocket Science.
An article in the journal Neuron documents an experiment in which monkeys were trained to play Rock Scissors Paper. When a monkey played a winning strategy he was likely to repeat it on the next round. When he played a losing strategy he was likely to choose on the next round the strategy that would have won on this round. The researchers were interested in how monkeys learn and they interpret the results as consistent with “regret”-based learning.
Unfortunately in the experiment the monkeys were playing against a (minimax-randomizing) computer and not other monkeys. With this as a control it would now be interesting to see if they follow the same pattern when they play against another monkey. (With this pattern, the winning monkey would be negatively serially correlated.)
Vueltiao volley: Victor Shao.
Linkedin’s IPO followed the familiar pattern. Priced to initial investors at $45/share, the stock soared to a peak of $120/share on the first day of trading and closed at around $90. “Money was left on the table.” Felix Salmon has a good summary of different opinions about this and he briefly discusses auctions as an alternative to the traditional door-to-door IPO. You will recall that Google used an auction when it went public.
Like Mr. Salmon you might think that the winner’s curse would prevent an auction from discovering the right price and ensuring that money is not left on the table. The price-discovery properties of an auction rely on partially informed investors bidding according to their private information and this information thereby being reflected in the price. But a (potentially) winning bidder foresees that his win would mean that most other bidders bid less than he and that therefore “the market” is more pessmistic about the value of the firm than he is. Anticipating this, he underbids. Since all informed investors do this, the auction price will understate the value of the firm. Money will be left on the table again.
But an IPO is a multi-unit auction. Many shares are up for sale. A new strategic feature arises in these auctions, the loser’s curse. If you are outbid, then you know that many informed investors were more optimistic than you and this will make you regret having bid too low. This strategic force pushes you to raise your bid.
And in fact, as shown by Pesendorfer and Swinkels, for large auctions, under some quite general conditions, a uniform-price sealed bid auction produces a sales price which comes very close to the market’s best estimate of the value of the firm. No money is left on the table.
Via Mind Hacks, a story in the New York Times about twins conjoined at the head in such a way that they share brain matter and possibly consciousness.
Twins joined at the head — the medical term is craniopagus — are one in 2.5 million, of which only a fraction survive. The way the girls’ brains formed beneath the surface of their fused skulls, however, makes them beyond rare: their neural anatomy is unique, at least in the annals of recorded scientific literature. Their brain images reveal what looks like an attenuated line stretching between the two organs, a piece of anatomy their neurosurgeon, Douglas Cochrane of British Columbia Children’s Hospital, has called a thalamic bridge, because he believes it links the thalamus of one girl to the thalamus of her sister. The thalamus is a kind of switchboard, a two-lobed organ that filters most sensory input and has long been thought to be essential in the neural loops that create consciousness. Because the thalamus functions as a relay station, the girls’ doctors believe it is entirely possible that the sensory input that one girl receives could somehow cross that bridge into the brain of the other. One girl drinks, another girl feels it.
- The story is very interesting and moving. Worth a read.
- I would like to see them play Rock-Scissors-Paper.
- More generally, experimental game theory suffers from a mutliple-hypothesis problem. We assume rationality, and knowledge of the others’ strategy. Departures from theoretical predictions could come from violations of either of these two. The twins present a unique control.
In their daily lives, politicians tell truths, half truths, do not tell the whole truth or just outright lie. Elections, media questioning, the cut and thrust of policy debate force them into situations where they confront these choices. If they take the easy route and veer from the truth, they either get away with it or are caught out. If they get away with it, they learn that they can tell half truths and survive. So, they will do it again. Perhaps, they will go even further and outright lie.
The rest of us in our daily lives are not pushed to constantly debate and live in the media spotlight. We have few opportunities to learn what happens if we lie. Perhaps, we assume that that route leads to discovery, ignominy and ruin. This assumption is not tested frequently as we are rarely put in positions where we have to experiment. Hence the assumption survives for longer is a kind of personal self-confirming equilibrium. Our inner (Anthony) Weiner is suppressed by the fear of discovery. But in the realm of politics Congressman Anthony Weiner released his inner Weiner many years ago with impunity and started his slide down the slippery slope
This simple theory assumes symmetry – we are all alike but the environment in which we live is different. An even simpler theory assumes asymmetry – the types of people who go into politics are more prone to Weinerisms than the rest of us.
Perfectionism seems like an irrational obsession. If you are already very close to perfect the marginal benefit from getting a little bit closer is smaller and smaller and, because we are talking about perfection, the marginal cost is getting higher and higher. An interior solution seems to be indicated.
But this is wrong. There is a discontinuity at perfection, a discrete jump up in status that can only be realized with literal perfection. Too see why, consider a competitive diver who performs his dive perfectly. Suppose that the skill of a diver ranges from 0 to 100, say uniformly distributed, and that only divers of skill greater than 80 can execute a perfect dive. Then conditional on a perfect dive, observers will estimate his skill to be 90. But if his dive falls short of perfection, no matter how close to perfection he gets, observers’ estimate of his skill will be bounded above by 80. That last step to perfection gives him a discontinuous jump upward in esteem.
Now of course in contests like diving, the competitors choose the difficulty of their dives. This unravels the drive to perfectionism because in fact the observers will figure out that he has chosen a dive that is easy enough for him to perfect. In equilibrium a diver of skill level q chooses a dive which can be perfected only by divers whose skill is q or larger. And then the choice of dive will perfectly reveal his skill. The discontinuity goes away.
But many activities have their level of difficulty given to us, and even among those where we can choose, most activities are not as transparent as diving. At a piano recital you hear only the pieces that the performers have prepared. You know nothing about the pieces they practiced but then shelved. The fame from pitching perfect game is not closely approximated by the notoriety of the near-perfect game.
You get to see only the blog post I wrote, not the ones that are still on the back burner.
(Drawing: Wait! from www.f1me.net)
Kellogg is raising money for a new building. The Dean and the Great and the Good and doing fundraising. Various committees are in charge of deciding how people should be allocated to offices. Given by lack of political acumen and seniority, I know I will be next to the men’s restroom in the basement. The absence of amy ambiguity about the outcome means I am spending no time agonizing about my decision. But I imagine many of my colleagues are looking at proposed plans and wondering if they can get the corner office. Or will they prefer to be close to friends and co-authors at the cost of giving up a great view of the lake and fit young undergrads playing soccer on the lakeside fields?
Last week’s economic theory seminar speaker, Mariagiovanna Baccara, has a paper with several co-authors that offers an answer. The paper documents the experience of the faculty at an unnamed (but easily guessable) professional school which moved into a new building. The school decided to use a random serial dictatorship mechanism: the professors were split into four equivalence classes by rank (full professors, assistant etc.). Within each class, the order in which each player could choose an office was determined randomly. If there are no externalities, this mechanism achieves an efficient allocation. The first player to move gets the penthouse suite, the second player, the next best corner office etc. But if players care about which players they end up next to, the procedure is not efficient. Each player will not fully internalize the effects of his choice on others.
Before the move, the professors sat within departments and small clusters of like-minded fellow researchers. If the value of this and other networks is small, we would expect players to choose the “room with a view” strategy, picking the best physical location from the remaining offices. The authors compare the allocation that would have resulted if faculty chose offices based on physical characteristics alone with the allocation that actually arose. They find, for example, that co-authors are 36% more likely to be together in the actual allocation that the simulated allocations.
It is possible to estimate network effects a bit better. Aware of the possible inefficiencies of their mechanism, the designers relied on the Coase Theorem to help them out: The mechanism allowed faculty to exchange offices in exchange for cash from their research accounts. If arbitrary exchanges are implemented say between 10 faculty, then ex post exchange will achieve the surplus maximizing allocation. The initial allocation determined via the dictatorship will simply determine the status quo from which bargaining begins but not the final allocation: the famous idea of property right neutrality. But large scale exchanges involve transactions costs and there were few exchanges observed and the ones observed involved two professors. So the authors look at pairwise stable allocations. Combined with various separability assumptions on preferences, this equilibrium notion allows them to estimate network effects. They find co-authorship is more important than department affiliation and friendship. Once these effects are estimated and utilities identified, we can ask the value left on the table by pairwise stable allocations. The authors find an allocation that gives a 183% increases in utility compared to the implemented allocation.
As other schools move buildings, they will use other mechanisms. It will be interesting to study their experience.
Let’s start with the premise that self-confidence leads to greater success. (Now, you may object because most of the highly self-confident people you know are not as good as they think they are. But the premise is simply that they are more successful than they would otherwise be, not that their self-confidence is fully validated.)
Is it because confidence by itself makes you more successful? You can do some interesting behavioral economics with that assumption but here’s another channel that requires less of a leap. When you are confident in yourself you try harder, you take more chances, you let your intuitions run. But that by itself doesn’t make you any more successful than the next guy. Indeed it probably will make you less successful because your intuitions are probably wrong.
But it means that you will find that out sooner. And if you are confident enough, when your first foray fails you will believe in yourself enough to regroup and try again. Even if your confidence doesn’t make it any more likely that these successive attempts pay off, you will still be more successful in the long run because you will learn faster what doesn’t work, and those lessons won’t demoralize you.
And once we have this, then it follows that confidence per se can make you more successful. Because confidence signals this ability to roll with the punches and that will be rewarded by others.
You’ve seen Thor, are about to go to the X Men prequel and are waiting to see Captain America. But where is Superman?
It turns out that a copyright issue has bedevilled the Superman character for many years. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster signed away rights to the Superman character to DC comics for $130 over seventy years ago. As the character literally and figuratively took off in the movies and in comic books, Siegel and Shuster got little share in the revenue. But the Copyright Act of 1976 allowed the original owners and their heirs to reclaim ownership if it turned out the value of their invention had become clearer over time and they had been underpaid. Siegel’s heirs used the law to eventually achieve joint ownership in 2008. Since then, investment in the Superman character has languished.
The reasons are simple and are related to the classic hold-up model of Grossman-Hart. Any gain from investment in Superman made by DC Comics will have to be shared with the Siegel heirs. This acts like a tax on investment and hence generates underinvestment. It is better of the ownership is in just one hand. But this amplifies the hold-up problem – it is obvious that DC Comics should own the rights to Superman. After all, they have the expertise in the comic book business and in the brand extensions. But how will they decide the price they will pay the Siegels to get 100% ownership? The present discounted value of the franchise going forward will be the key determinant. Hence, DC Comics (Warner Bros is also involved) have the incentive to destroy the value of the franchise to get a good price. Fans lament that this is what is happening:
Perhaps the most damning part of the decision document was the revelation that executives at Warners shared fans’ cynicism about Superman’s potential (Remember, Warners and DC were the defendants in this case):
Defendants’ film industry expert witness, Mr. [John] Gumpert, termed Superman as “damaged goods,” a character so “uncool” as to be considered passe, an opinion echoed by Warner Bros. business affairs executive, Steven Spira… Indeed, Mr. [Alan] Horn [Warner Bros. President] admitted to being “daunted” by the fact that the 1987 theatrical release of Superman IV had generated around $15 million domestic box office, raising the specter of the “franchise [having] played out.”
Almost as surreally, DC and Warners apparently argued to the court that
Superman was equivalent [in terms of public recognition and financial value] to a low-tier comic book character that appeared mostly on radio during the 1930s and 1940s and that has not been seen since a brief television show in the mid-1960s (the Green Hornet); an early 20th century series of books (Tarzan) or a 1930s series of pulp stories (Conan) later intermittently made into comic books and films; or a television, radio, and comic book character from the 1940s and 1950s, much beloved by my father, that long ago rode off into the proverbial sunset with little-to-no exploitation in film or television for decades (The Lone Ranger).
And these are the people in charge of the character?!?
(Hat Tip: Scott Ashworth)
There is typically a fine for parking your car on the street facing the wrong direction, i.e. against traffic. What is the harm in that?
Economic theory suggests that penalties should be attached to behaviors that are correlated with crime and not necessarily to criminal behavior itself. For example, price fixing may be impossible to detect, but conspiracy to fix prices may be much easier. It makes sense to make cheap talk a crime even though the talk itself causes no harm.
When you car is parked facing the wrong way its a sure sign that A) you previously committed the crime of driving the wrong way and B) you will soon do it again.
The last time the Republicans in the House stuck in their heels and voted against legislation proposed by the President, the Dow fell 777 points. The President was George W. Bush and he was asking the House to approve TARP. A few days later, the House – Democrats and Republicans alike – blinked and approved the legislation.
This time the President is a Democrat and he is demanding that the Congress approve an increase in the debt limit. The stakes are high and if the debt limit is not raised we might see another collapse in the Dow. Who will blink first?
One answer is that we must ask who will get blamed by voters if the deal does not get made. In 2008, a Republican President was at odds with Republicans in the House. The further the Dow fell, the more the Republicans looked as if they were to blame. In 2011, each side can hope to pass the buck and blame the other if the debt limit is not raised. The side the voters blame will suffer in the next election. So both sides will dig in and other things remaining equal the war of attrition is worse.
Another answer is that the correct audience the politicians are playing to is not the voters but Wall Street. The collapse of AIG caught everyone by surprise but the risks of not increasing the debt limit have been discussed for months. Wall Street will suffer if the Government cannot pay owners of Treasury bonds. They and their lobbyists have the politicians’ attention. The campaign donations will dry up if the politicians play havoc with debt repayment. In this scenario, the war of attrition will peter out as each side chickens out in the face of declining donations.
Cheap Talk 