A Change of Hearts
Jul. 31st, 2016 03:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
todayiamadaisyNo knitting to photograph again this week, alas. The coming week will be frantic, so there may not be any knitting to photograph either next Sunday. Things should be back to normal after that.
This weekend I have been having a little chat with myself about work, which is still making me very unhappy. Just having a tentative sort of plan makes me feel a bit better, so fingers crossed.
This morning I have been to the cinema to see a New Zealand film, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, in which grizzled Sam Neill and his foster son go on the lam to avoid New Zealand's extremely hardcore Child Welfare Authority (which has its own armoured people carrier, per this film). You should all go and see it, should it pass by your way: it's very funny and a bit sad, and it has an excellent Lord of the Rings joke.
July books read
* Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioural Economics - Richard H Thaler (2015) ★ ★ ★ ★
Richard Thaler is a pre-eminent behavioural economist; you may have heard of his book, Nudge. I thought this would be similar, and it sort of is, but it's really more an autobiography of his thinking. In 1973 he went to Stanford and wrote this paper; then he went somewhere else and wrote this paper; and so on. That sounds boring, but it really isn't. He's chatty about the sort of questions his research is trying to answer, and gossipy about which other prominent economists don't like his work and vice versa. There is a genuinely funny chapter about the University of Chicago's School of Business moving to a new building, leading to the tenured professors - including at least one Nobel laureate - working themselves into a frenzy about about who gets first dibs on picking a new office.
Here is an example of the sort of stuff you'll find in here: one of Thaler's early research questions into what he calls "mental accounting":
Suppose you bought a case of your favourite wine 10 years ago for $20 a bottle. The wine now sells for $75 a bottle.
[Poll #2050797]
The proper economic answer for both scenarios is $75, the opportunity to cost of the bottle (that is, the cost of the next best alternative use for it, which in this case is selling it). Thaler's research shows that many people actually value their pre-existing bottle differently depending on how it gets used: so they feel it costs $75 when they drop it, but it's free if they drink it. Why is it so? You'll have to read the book to find out. :-)
* Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard - Chip Heath & Dan Heath (2010) ★ ★ ★ ★
As this and the above one suggest, I'm still reading things off the recommended reading list for my MBA subject. I quite enjoyed this one. As with many of these sort of books, it takes a metaphor and beats it into the ground. In this case, it's riding an elephant as a metaphor for taking action. To change direction, you need to direct the rider (the rational brain), motivate the elephant (the emotional brain) and shape the path (provide the right environment). There, I've just saved you reading it.
* Swan Song - John Galsworthy (1928) ★ ★ ★ ★
This month's tea and book club subscription: book six of the Forsyte Chronicles, some Egyptian camomile teabags and a little notebook. It turns out I have read at least one other of the Forsyte books, back before I started recording books on a spreadsheet. I know I've seen a TV version, and I thought that was my only exposure to it. Reading this, though, more came back. I remembered the family tree at the start. It has a lot of people called Jolyon on it. The Forsytes were really into Jolyon as a name. Jolyon had a son called Jolyon who had a son called Old Jolyon who had a son called Young Jolyon who had sons called Jolly and Jon, and I think we all know what those names are short for.
This is as beautifully written as you'd expect from a Nobel laureate. It's very kind to its characters, even the awful ones; tart and tragic by turns. It stands alone, but I suspect I'd have got more out of it (maybe even another star) if I'd read all the books in sequence and knew the whole backstory instead of just dimly remembered bits of it.
This weekend I have been having a little chat with myself about work, which is still making me very unhappy. Just having a tentative sort of plan makes me feel a bit better, so fingers crossed.
This morning I have been to the cinema to see a New Zealand film, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, in which grizzled Sam Neill and his foster son go on the lam to avoid New Zealand's extremely hardcore Child Welfare Authority (which has its own armoured people carrier, per this film). You should all go and see it, should it pass by your way: it's very funny and a bit sad, and it has an excellent Lord of the Rings joke.
July books read
* Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioural Economics - Richard H Thaler (2015) ★ ★ ★ ★
Richard Thaler is a pre-eminent behavioural economist; you may have heard of his book, Nudge. I thought this would be similar, and it sort of is, but it's really more an autobiography of his thinking. In 1973 he went to Stanford and wrote this paper; then he went somewhere else and wrote this paper; and so on. That sounds boring, but it really isn't. He's chatty about the sort of questions his research is trying to answer, and gossipy about which other prominent economists don't like his work and vice versa. There is a genuinely funny chapter about the University of Chicago's School of Business moving to a new building, leading to the tenured professors - including at least one Nobel laureate - working themselves into a frenzy about about who gets first dibs on picking a new office.
Here is an example of the sort of stuff you'll find in here: one of Thaler's early research questions into what he calls "mental accounting":
Suppose you bought a case of your favourite wine 10 years ago for $20 a bottle. The wine now sells for $75 a bottle.
[Poll #2050797]
The proper economic answer for both scenarios is $75, the opportunity to cost of the bottle (that is, the cost of the next best alternative use for it, which in this case is selling it). Thaler's research shows that many people actually value their pre-existing bottle differently depending on how it gets used: so they feel it costs $75 when they drop it, but it's free if they drink it. Why is it so? You'll have to read the book to find out. :-)
* Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard - Chip Heath & Dan Heath (2010) ★ ★ ★ ★
As this and the above one suggest, I'm still reading things off the recommended reading list for my MBA subject. I quite enjoyed this one. As with many of these sort of books, it takes a metaphor and beats it into the ground. In this case, it's riding an elephant as a metaphor for taking action. To change direction, you need to direct the rider (the rational brain), motivate the elephant (the emotional brain) and shape the path (provide the right environment). There, I've just saved you reading it.
* Swan Song - John Galsworthy (1928) ★ ★ ★ ★
This month's tea and book club subscription: book six of the Forsyte Chronicles, some Egyptian camomile teabags and a little notebook. It turns out I have read at least one other of the Forsyte books, back before I started recording books on a spreadsheet. I know I've seen a TV version, and I thought that was my only exposure to it. Reading this, though, more came back. I remembered the family tree at the start. It has a lot of people called Jolyon on it. The Forsytes were really into Jolyon as a name. Jolyon had a son called Jolyon who had a son called Old Jolyon who had a son called Young Jolyon who had sons called Jolly and Jon, and I think we all know what those names are short for.
This is as beautifully written as you'd expect from a Nobel laureate. It's very kind to its characters, even the awful ones; tart and tragic by turns. It stands alone, but I suspect I'd have got more out of it (maybe even another star) if I'd read all the books in sequence and knew the whole backstory instead of just dimly remembered bits of it.