Considering how hard it is to make a choice, what is the optimal number of subscription plans for SaaS?
One? Three? Five?
Why two men committing the same crime get different chances at a parole
21–30 of 44 posts
Re: Why two men committing the same crime get different chances at a parole
#22A couple things leaped out at me reading this. What about insulin resistance? Do people with high insulin resistance have less of an effect from sugary snacks? On the flip side, how about exercise? Do people with a lot of sugar stored in muscles and a more optimum processing of sugar do better on these things? To put this more generally, the author seemed to be reporting from a deterministic viewpoint, i.e., whatever…
For what it's worth, athletes on ketogenic diets(very low carbs) eventually adapt and return to their previous performance.
Re: Why two men committing the same crime get different chances at a parole
#23That was really interesting and the title should've been different. I assumed it was the same story from a few months ago about the statistical likelihood of parole on the time of day but it's far more than that. Three things sprung to mind: The first is that I've often said I like the food we get at Google because food is, for me, a bunch of decisions I just don't care about. Where to go? What to order from the menu…
Google rose to a prominence in an era of portal pages. Yahoo in particular had a home page without hundreds of links. Google presented you with a logo, a text box, two buttons and
Yep. Also consider the superior experience of reading a news article (like this one) in single-page mode instead of page by page. Clicking on a link feels a lot more like "a decision" than turning the page of a book, which flows naturally. The single-page option just "feels" a lot better.
One issue that comes up in web design is that reading a link (even a spurious one) taxes the reader's mind substantially more than reading regular text. If I recall correctly, the cognitive load of a link is about five times that of a regular word.
People tend to "block out" the clutter, but there's a subconscious mental energy expenditure in the "blocking out" process. People don't notice the effect day-to-day, but over time it leads to people preferring Google over Yahoo.
Apple is famous for making decisions for its customers. Many people rail against this lack of control. I personally appreciate it.
I agree. Windows, as far as I can see it, is the worst of both worlds. You have to do a lot of work (make a lot of decisions) to get a half-decent experience but if you want to control it at a low level, the way you can with Linux, you can't. Apple provides you with a B+/A- default experience, and Jobs's attitude is that if you want something "better", you should use something else. Which is the right approach because one person's "A+" experience is another's confusing horror.
The quickest way to enervate someone, in this regard, is to present that person with lots of decisions to make, and then ensure that the outcomes of those decisions are still somewhat unsatisfactory. That's the Windows experience, in a nutshell.
The second is on leadership. Leaders make decisions, obviating the need for followers to weigh up choices. Could this be part of why so many of us are so eager to follow? I remember a scene from an early Mad Men episode where Don was saying that what most people crave is to be told that whatever they're doing is OK.
Don Draper: banned on Google+. :)
I remember that scene (in Mad Men) quite well and I think it's insightful. It reminds me of On Killing, an excellent book on the psychological effects of war. One proposed candidate for the increasing prevalence of PTSD is the way soldiers are treated when they return from war. War has always been terrible, but the change is in how soldiers are seen on return. In 1945, they were received as heroes for defeating the Nazis, which helped them feel "OK" about what they'd had to do. After Vietnam, they were called "baby killers" and generally treated quite poorly. For that reason, a lot of the Vietnam vets never recovered.
Re: Why two men committing the same crime get different chances at a parole
#24That was really interesting and the title should've been different. I assumed it was the same story from a few months ago about the statistical likelihood of parole on the time of day but it's far more than that. Three things sprung to mind: The first is that I've often said I like the food we get at Google because food is, for me, a bunch of decisions I just don't care about. Where to go? What to order from the menu…
Google rose to a prominence in an era of portal pages. Yahoo in particular had a home page without hundreds of links. Google presented you with a logo, a text box, two buttons and Yep. Also consider the superior experience of reading a news article (like this one) in single-page mode instead of page by page. Clicking on a link feels a lot more like "a decision" than turning the page of a book, which flows naturally.…
> I agree. Windows, as far as I can see it, is the worst of both worlds. You have to do a lot of work (make a lot of decisions) to get a half-decent experience but if you want to control it at a low level, the way you can with Linux, you can't.
I have a slightly different take on this. While I agree that Windows is an example of how trying to be all things to all men leads to a confusing mess, at least in Windows 7 it's still a fairly decent default experience. It probably does punish the true tinkerer for all its complex layers of the registry, local and group policies, magic folders (eg startup), etc.
But Linux on the desktop just goes to prove time and again just how bad a user experience it is to give true "freedom". I don't want to figure out what the best way of playing video or audio files is and choosing between N (where N is typically a fairly large number) options.
This is something that Canonical (for one) is trying to address but at this stage it almost requires a complete rethink of the Linux desktop (which may be what Wayland and others hope to achieve).
> I remember that scene (in Mad Men) quite well and I think it's insightful. It reminds me of On Killing, an excellent book on the psychological effects of war.
I could probably rhapsodize about the insights of Mad Men all day.
That's certainly an interesting take on war. I think it's more than that though. In modern warfare we (as a society) have become incredibly good at training soldiers to do their job reflexively. In a combat situation the training kicks in and the modern soldier will, generally speaking, shoot an enemy (as one example) almost completely instinctively.
It's only after that happens when the soldier has time to process what they've done that they run into trouble. I saw a documentary on this and it was talking about how there's a real disconnect between the how of a soldier's actions and the why with the increasingly effective training.
Re: Why two men committing the same crime get different chances at a parole
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google rose to a prominence in an era of portal pages. Yahoo in particular had a home page without hundreds of links. Google presented you with a logo, a text box, two buttons and Yep. Also consider the superior experience of reading a news article (like this one) in single-page mode instead of page by page. Clicking on a link feels a lot more like "a decision" than turning the page of a book, which flows naturally.…
> I agree. Windows, as far as I can see it, is the worst of both worlds. You have to do a lot of work (make a lot of decisions) to get a half-decent experience but if you want to control it at a low level, the way you can with Linux, you can't. I have a slightly different take on this. While I agree that Windows is an example of how trying to be all things to all men leads to a confusing mess, at least in Windows 7 i…
I could probably rhapsodize about the insights of Mad Men all day.
Something I find interesting is that Mad Men and Breaking Bad are superficially different shows, but actually extremely similar. Ignore the radically different backdrops and they're both about out-of-control egos and "men at work" drama. The difference is that one setting involves alcoholism and advertising and people who fall out just get fired, while the other involves methamphetamine and murder and failing (for Walter) means death. Mad Men is erotic, Breaking Bad is thanatoptic; but the shows are two different takes on the same society.
I don't know if this correspondence is intentional on the part of AMC's directors, but Mad Men and Breaking Bad are, to me, clear A-and-Z bookends of the American Era.
It's only after that happens when the soldier has time to process what they've done that they run into trouble. I saw a documentary on this and it was talking about how there's a real disconnect between the how of a soldier's actions and the why with the increasingly effective training.
Soldiers and policemen have a terrible job. For psychopaths (2%) killing another person is easy. For everyone else, it's extremely difficult (even in self-defense) and something people generally avoid. Which means that an untrained normal person drawing against a psychopath is likely to be shot dead. This may not be new knowledge, but 85% of guns issued in the American Civil War were never fired.
Re: Why two men committing the same crime get different chances at a parole
#26tl;dr anyone please? nytimes.com is blocked over here.
Did you know why dogs are fed sugar after obeying commands for some time? It's because a dose of glucose restores the willpower. This stays true for humans. In supermarkets, we are offered sweet snacks at checkout—when we have little willpower, the reason being lots of choices we had to make while shopping. So both a) our brain requires more glucose and b) we can't resist sugar snacks anyway. No matter how junk that…
Thanks! I can access it through proxy but internet speed is slow, so that would take n seconds, at least it will take more than the time u spent writing your post. So, thanks for effort, interesting stuff, especially for the guy like me who comes from biology to computer science.
Re: Why two men committing the same crime get different chances at a parole
#27tl;dr anyone please? nytimes.com is blocked over here.
"Extraneous factors in judicial decisions" http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/03/29/1018033108 --- "The science of justice I think it's time we broke for lunch… Court rulings depend partly on when the judge last had a snack" http://www.economist.com/node/18557594
>The science of justice
That reminds me of the youtube series about justice. There is one channel on youtube, they upload videos from Harvard lectures about justice and law system. That one was very interesting and insightful. Sometimes students would even cry while debating with professor. Sorry cant post a link, since Youtube is also blocked here. Maybe some of you guys can post the link, there might be ones who are interested. Anyways, thanks for the effort of getting the idea of the post!
Re: Why two men committing the same crime get different chances at a parole
#28I'm curious what effect sleep, meditation, and rest would have on willpower.
Re: Why two men committing the same crime get different chances at a parole
#29Interesting that they mention the Dell website for decision making. 4 times this year I've decided to purchase a new computer and spent hours trying to figure out what to buy from the Dell website. I have yet to upgrade.
An easy way around this: Buy mac hardware, install windows.
Re: Why two men committing the same crime get different chances at a parole
#30Interesting that they mention the Dell website for decision making. 4 times this year I've decided to purchase a new computer and spent hours trying to figure out what to buy from the Dell website. I have yet to upgrade.
An easy way around this: Buy mac hardware, install windows.
That's actually what I decided to do in the end, until I looked at the Apple site and figured a mac just isn't powerful enough for my needs...plus the release schedules are a mess right now...mid cycle everything.