Author: Captain Obvious

 

We have had high occupancy vehicle lanes for a while here in Atlanta but have now moved to dynamic pricing to reflect the perceived value associated with shorter times on Interstate 85.  This highway is about six lanes wide on each side in many areas, but it still congests to a standstill during morning and evening rush hours.

I never use those toll lanes even when the traffic is at a standstill.  There is something just wrong in my mind paying $5-10 to save ten minutes or so, but it tickles me to see them grind to a halt as well … with no refunds for the fact that too many people are in them.

These lanes are called Lexus lanes by the locals because that is the typical car brand that uses them.  We drive a Lexus but don’t use the lanes.  I might feel different if I were trying to get to work or had some time dependent issue, but it just galls me to think how much people are spending for convenience.

Maybe I am just out of touch because Disney just announced “Lightning Lanes” that give patrons no-wait access to rides and attractions, thereby avoiding the lines.  I stopped taking my kids to Disney because we spent half the day in lines, so I guess this makes sense, until you realize the surcharge is $300-400 a day per person for this privilege.

Why is it that Disney gets a pass on things like this when they are under the gun by the woke gang to eliminate so many characters that are the bedrock of the Disney stories we grew up liking.  Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is under fire for obvious reasons as are many other wonderful stories from our childhood. 

How can society say it wants affordability, equity, and inclusion then encourage class discrimination like this?  Plus, where is the moral outrage by those who can afford these fees to the obvious price gauging since there is no way this privilege costs Disney this amount.  This is clearly pricing for the perceived value of convenience and not reflecting the costs of providing the service.

If you only have a few hours in the park, this makes some sense but fails on so many other levels in my opinion.  But perhaps there is something to be learned here for the electric power industry.  We have priced electricity based upon the costs it incurs to provide it.  Is there a market for premium power choices, and possibly for better reliability?  If so, can utilities who have been regulated to keep prices in line with costs charge for something that may just reflect value rather than incurred costs? 

It seems especially odd to me that the trend these days is to avoid price transparency … the push to advanced electric rates seems to have stalled at the alter of convenience.  If you can’t recover costs for this, why not pursue the path of pricing for the convenience people are seeking.

Lots to think about, and possibly some concrete lessons to learn from Disney.  Let’s see.

EPR stands for Enhanced Producer Responsibility.  GreenBiz has rightfully pointed out that the food industry is embroiled in a reporting transition where the food products we see at retail will be tagged to indicate how they result in food waste.  The idea is that producers should have full responsibility for the journey of their food and its packaging from beginning to end.

This makes sense on some level of course.  If you make the mess, you should clean it up.  But it fails to ask and answer the question about why the mess was made in the first place.

By analogy, if you play paintball and mess up public property, you should be the one to clean it up.  But the bigger question is whether you should be allowed to play paintball on public property in the first place.  Shouldn’t people be restricted to playing paintball in places designed for that?

Just as an aside … I hate paintball, but know others love it, so far be it from me to suggest you shouldn’t play.  But I have every right for you to follow the rules and not expect others or society to clean it up.

So, what is ECR?  I changed the word Producer to the word Consumer.  After all, might we be better off pushing consumers to move away from convenience foods and take more responsibility to eat fresh produce?

I know … wouldn’t this hurt jobs and the economy?  Sure, but these products are not good for society in the first place.  In some ways they are no different than the production of cigarettes.  Yes, I do know it is not at that level of health harm, but the point is they are NOT good for us.  They just taste good.

Isn’t it clear now that our societies’ problems are being made worse by the salt in prepared foods?  Yes, we are now more interested in composting and returning to a more sustainable food cycle.  We all want tomatoes that taste like tomatoes and enjoy picking those pea pods as snacks?  However, we have now become a society focused on convenience rather than responsibility.  We want the privilege to eat whatever we want.

We also seem to prize and are willing to pay more for organic foods, trusting our suppliers to be honest that they are indeed produced that way.

Please realize then that big business is once again using all this as a side show … if you failed to catch that prior blog, here is the link to it:  https://captain-obvious.com/the-side-show/

There are times when I truly wonder whether we really believe you can incentivize creativity. I hear of adult education classes on subjects like creative thinking and innovation implying it can be taught like math and science. I have even run into “ideation meetings” where the presumption is that if you put enough intelligent people in a room and facilitate a discussion about a problem, a creative solution will emerge. Frankly, I call these meetings group gropes. Creativity is more like art than science … and most people simply can’t draw.

Plus, having been in all too many of these meetings, let me remind everyone that the process of using consensus is conditioned into modern minds and will almost certainly result in the dismissal of truly creative ideas because the group simply “can’t see beyond their own perceptional difficulties.” 

Then, you run into people who think that if you present enough puzzle challenges to people they will “think outside the box.” I applaud the idea of demonstrating that most people are trapped in their thinking and have been conditioned to “color within the lines of a picture.”  But the critical thinking skill is still not going to emerge in most cases.  Most people just don’t get it.

The culmination of some of these concepts can best be summarized by the joke economists love to tell about a bus full of them that veers off the road and is heading down into a deep ravine to their certain death. Despite all this the economists are happily cheering because they believe such an intense need will certainly result in someone, or something emerging as a solution to rescue them.

So, what is my point in this blog? Let’s take Elon Musk … a brilliant person who happens to be a rare breed of innovator. Not only can he enunciate the creative idea, but he can also bring capital and people together to solve the problem. He could have simply stopped with the EV but went on to redefine rockets into space. Not all his ideas are necessarily workable immediately, but he is also not done yet. Give him time. Let him work his magic.  Don’t expect him to be popular.

Steve Jobs was another who proved the point that along with genius comes failures. This is all a part of innovation. Finding why things don’t work is sometimes more valuable than success. See Post It Notes for example … a glue that wouldn’t stick.

Our modern attitudes about success trick us into thinking the process of innovation is just like a production model, implying you just push for speed and use incentives to get people to pull together. No, you stop and consider what you have learned that didn’t work and then move forward trying different ideas.
We seem to believe we have already found the right ideas and all we need is to push harder. No, we need to step back from the situation and listen to the few people who truly are critical thinkers. Most of them are not raising their hands in the air to gain attention, so they just sit on the sidelines.

Why? Because most people today are more interested in shooting them down, rather than listening and working together to make things work. Why risk your inner peace trying to help the current band of ideologues and their fantasies?

Engineers are trained to be especially careful defining the problem we are asked to solve. In all too many cases, we have to dig deeper to see what lies behind that problem that may be the root cause, rather than to plough ahead chasing symptoms. That is where we are today. We are chasing symptoms and then voting on a batch of bad ideas thinking we have picked a winner. Albert Einstein said it best:

“It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”

My recent blog on searching for truth prompted me to take a deeper dive into what likely underlies the problems we all have when we say we are seeking the truth. Intellectuals know the root problem is most often confirmation bias which, according to Wikipedia, is “the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one’s prior beliefs or values.  People display this bias when they select information that supports their views, ignoring contrary information, or when they interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing attitudes. The effect is strongest for desired outcomes, for emotionally charged issues, and for deeply entrenched beliefs.”

Therefore, since AI uses written and numeric data from the real world, how can it detect confirmation bias, and if it can’t, isn’t it going to recommend biased results?  Plus, if the consensus on something is what AI is going to spit back at us, how do we train it to also offer contrary opinions, so we know the full story? Here are some excellent suggestions from the University of California at Merced:

“Confirmation bias can lead to miscommunications, escalating conflicts when key pieces of information are overlooked. Consider these three ways to counter confirmation bias to improve your communications, relationships and work product:

Focus on falsification bias – Confirmation bias can be a strong influence, so you will need to actively look for evidence that disproves your point of view.

Get a different perspective – Get out of your echo chamber. Approach someone you know who sees things differently from you and ask them what they are seeing. Be open to their ideas and try to explore them.

Talk with an outside party – Approach a coach or someone you trust to help you impartially explore your thoughts and beliefs without judgment.”

Well now isn’t that interesting. The key to maturing our thinking and avoiding errors in seeking truth is that we should be listening to others, especially those who disagree with our points of view. Seems like we are back at the same conclusion I recommended in my prior blog. Listen to voices that disagree with our preconceived ideas … listen … question … don’t argue. Let the diversity of thought soak in … deeply.

Now, let’s look at how AI coupled with social media can concoct a toxic cocktail. Again, from Wikipedia we learn that confirmation bias is amplified using filter bubbles, or “algorithmic editing”, which displays to individuals only information they are likely to agree with, while excluding opposing views.

Some have argued that confirmation bias is the reason why society can never escape from filter bubbles, because individuals are psychologically hardwired to seek information that agrees with their preexisting values and beliefs. Others have further argued that the mixture of the two is degrading democracy—claiming that this “algorithmic editing” removes diverse viewpoints and information—and that unless filter bubble algorithms are removed, voters will be unable to make fully informed political decisions. Therefore, our search for truth is hard work since we are fighting against both internal and external temptations to seek confirmation for what we already believe.

May our new year be filled with new and loving insights as we learn to listen to each other better. That should be a resolution we can keep if we really care at all.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion … aka DEI … seems like such an obviously good idea.  How can you argue with that principle. Well, just like the Inflation Reduction Act, which did exactly the opposite, the devil is always in the details.