October 2019 – Welcome to Third Age Thoughts

Breaking news

– In which Dorn turns breaking things into a virtue.

One of my duties at my last job was to break things. When a new computer program, website, or procedure was created by the office, I would dive into it and test it to the breaking point if I could. I followed the instructions as laid out, but tried think of ways they could be misinterpreted or mis-applied, resulting in the failure of the whole system. The theory was, of course, that it was better to find and fix these weak points while the product was in house than after it was made public.

I liked my job of breaking things, partly because it was like puzzle-solving, and partly because I had a knack for it. I understood the feelings of Nick Naylor, the “hero” of the 2005 dark comedy Thank You For Smoking. He’s a lobbyist for Big Tobacco, and when asked by a lung cancer victim how he can work at such a job and even enjoy it, he says the job gives him satisfaction because he is so good at it. (This is a very funny movie, and I recommend it if you missed it the first time around, unless you are offended by slurs cast on the health virtues of Vermont cheddar cheese. It’ll be on HBO over the next week or two.)

Of course I’m not suggesting that there’s any moral equivalency between trying to break things that people have worked to make unbreakable, and trying to get people addicted to a nasty life-shortening habit for money. The latter is odious, while the former is perfectly respectable. As Phil Johnson points out in his essay “Failure is just data“, testing out a new product is like a scientist testing a scientific hypothesis. If the product fails to perform as expected, it just means that the hypothesis (that the product is ready for rollout) is disproved.

“If this were to happen to a scientist,” Johnson explains,”the reaction would be that they are doing their job well, as long as they capture the data about why the hypothesis was wrong. It’s not out of the ordinary, it’s expected and necessary. The key is framing a failure as an informative versus negative outcome.” (Johnson may have a few blind spots himself about the mental and emotional makeup of scientists.)

His point is that there’s an emotional bias against experiencing a failure which is frequently misplaced—it often should be welcomed as a stepping stone towards ultimate success. This emotional bias is a form of confirmation bias (my favorite bias), which causes us to seek out information that confirms what we already believe, or what we want to believe.

This bias is present even when we don’t have pride of ownership in a product we are testing, or any objective stake at all in the success or failure of the process. In his book The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt describes an experiment performed by the originator of the term “confirmation bias”, where the process for determining a simple sequence of numbers is investigated:

In 1960, Peter Wason published his report on the “2–4–6 problem.” He showed people a series of three numbers and told them that the triplet conforms to a rule. They had to guess the rule by generating other triplets and then asking the experimenter whether the new triplet conformed to the rule. Suppose a subject first sees 2–4–6. The subject then generates a triplet in response: “4–6–8?” “Yes,” says the experimenter. “How about 120–122–124?” “Yes.”

It seemed obvious to most people that the rule was consecutive even numbers. But the experimenter told them this was wrong, so they tested out other rules: “3–5–7?” “Yes.” “What about 35–37–39?” “Yes.” “OK, so the rule must be any series of numbers that rises by two?” “No.” People had little trouble generating new hypotheses about the rule, sometimes quite complex ones. But what they hardly ever did was to test their hypotheses by offering triplets that did not conform to their hypothesis. For example, proposing 2–4–5 (yes) and 2–4–3 (no) would have helped people zero in on the actual rule: any series of ascending numbers.

Wason called this phenomenon the confirmation bias, the tendency to seek out and interpret new evidence in ways that confirm what you already think. People are quite good at challenging statements made by other people, but if it’s your belief, then it’s your possession—your child, almost—and you want to protect it, not challenge it and risk losing it.

My knack for breaking products and processes at work might have been related to my ability to suspend any pride of ownership (which of course is easier if it’s not my own product that I’m testing).

Now that I’m retired, though, I find I don’t have as many chances to practice this skill—there just aren’t that many things around that need me to test them to the breaking point, unless I want to failure-test my own work (which I’m not confident I could do objectively), or to tell Kathleen all the ways that the thing she is doing isn’t working. And that way madness lies!

Happy Halloween!

Thanks,
Dorn
10/31/2019

Manon

– In which Dorn touts a French opera.

Kathleen and I went to the movies today to see the NY Metropolitan Opera’s live simulcast of Massenet’s Manon, and it was so good I felt it deserved a post, or at least a mini-post. We have been seeing Met Opera simulcasts at the local movie theater for a couple of years now, and I think this might have been the best performance I’ve seen yet, which is saying a lot. The music was superbly sung by the romantic leads Lisette Oropesa and Michael Fabiano, who were both at the top of their form. They were outstandingly well matched both musically and dramatically, and had a definite charged chemistry on stage. If I had taken a trip to New York and sprung for full-price live opera tickets, I would not have been disappointed.

I especially wanted to rave about it because the simulcast is being repeated at many theaters next Wednesday, October 30, and if you have been thinking about seeing one of those Met Operas at the movies, I recommend this one to you. More info about next week’s event is here.

Here’s a few necessary disclaimers, though: (1) It is full-blooded opera, and not one of those operas where you can sing along “Hiya Tora!”, or sit back and enjoy the scenery if you don’t like the music. So if you don’t like opera, this is probably not for you. (2) Like most operas, it ends tragically. (3) It’s a big investment—we spent over $20 a ticket, and 4-1/2 hours in the theater (although I felt the time flew by). If that all sounds like too much for a Wednesday afternoon or evening, keep an eye out for it and it might show up one day on PBS Great Performances. But if you think you’d enjoy seeing and hearing it at the movies, then I’m betting you will and I urge you to go!

Thanks,
Dorn
10-26-2019

Honest

– In which Dorn paints a self-portrait, metaphorically speaking.

ona’s self-portrait post (here) prompted me to want to try one of my own. I can’t really paint or even sketch that well, so I thought I’d try a written sketch. Maybe I could come up with a brief description of something I’d done, thought, or said that would provide a picture of me.

Earlier this week I was grocery shopping and bought a huge megapack of paper towels on sale. When I got to the parking lot, I saw the paper towels in the bottom of the cart and realized I had not paid for them. They cost like fifteen bucks, but I was in a hurry, so I loaded them in the car and left, and promised myself I would pay for them the next time I went shopping. I cut out the bar code from the package and stuffed it in my wallet.

The next shopping trip, I paid at the self-checkout. I found myself migrating toward the unit closest to the self-checkout helper station, and being a little miffed when it was closed and I had to use one further away. I realized that I had the ridiculous hope that the helper there would notice I was scanning a cut-out bar code and ask why, so I could tell them and they could admire how honest I was. I further realized that I hadn’t gone to one of the manned checkout lines because then I would have had to tell the checker why I was scanning this bar code, and it would seem like bragging. Oh vanity, thy middle name is Wendall!

* * *

So that’s my self-portrait sketch, capturing my desire to be seen as: (a) honest, and (b) humble enough not to flaunt it except if asked. I realize now that my selection of this particular vignette to write about—although the grocery checker never knew that I Did The Right Thing, you now know—also captures me in pretty much the same light.

This attitude doesn’t really set me apart from most of humanity. We all like to think of ourselves as basically honest, and—mostly—we are. According to Daniel Ariely in The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty, we are all continually presented with opportunities to cheat, and how we deal with them depends on (a) whether the stakes are above a minimum amount below which our conscience doesn’t prick us (apparently that’s $15 in my case), and (b) whether we think others will witness our behavior.

This is a consequence of being social animals. In Jonathan Haidt’s book The Righteous Mind (which I’ve mentioned a couple of times before, including here), he describes the unconscious “sociometer” that all humans possess, that constantly scans the social environment for indications of how one’s relational value is being measured by others. One of the functions of the sociometer is to continually recalibrate our moral compass; another is to help us maintain an optimum relationship with our community. It’s an evolutionary advantage to be seen as moral, just as it’s an advantage to be seen as powerful, attractive, smart, or not-to-be-messed-with.

The concepts of morality, and of social communication of one’s morality, manifest in more significant ways than my paper towel sketch, including religion and politics. We have a friend who sincerely believes that if you don’t believe in God, you can’t be moral. I used to think that this was just a simplistic belief that no one would be good unless they thought they’d ultimately get a reward for it. But now I think her belief might be more sophisticated, and is an expansion of the sociometer concept. She might believe, though she may not express it this way, that people’s moralities are unconsciously tempered by what their sociometers tell them others think of them, including the Other from whom believers can keep no secrets.

There’s a quote in Ariely’s book that goes a long way toward explaining why Americans are so divided about Trump’s impeachment. I think the analysis applies equally to Democrats and Republicans:

It seems that the social forces around us work in two different ways: When the cheater is part of our social group, we identify with that person and, as a consequence, feel that cheating is more socially acceptable. But when the person cheating is an outsider, it is harder to justify our misbehavior, and we become more ethical out of a desire to distance ourselves from that immoral person and from that other (much less moral) out-group.

Some day, when I feel self-assured enough about this whole blogging business to take on some controversy, I would like to post more thoughts on both religion and politics. But that will have to wait until I’m more confident about the effect such writing would have on the readings of my sociometer.

Thanks,
Dorn
10/22/2019

PS: My search for that perfect pen name (mentioned here) continues. I just heard that Mitt Romney has already taken the name “Pierre Delecto”. So I’ll have to keep looking.

Circles of Time in Self-Portraits

My brother Dorn’s recent post about the circles of time (see it here) somehow made me think of a self portrait I made back around 1980. At the time, my Dad and I were both studying portraiture at the Torpedo Factory with Danni Dawson. The self-portrait on the left is something I did back then and I remember my Dad thinking I had over-aged my twenty-something self in the painting. “Maybe in 50 years you’ll look like that!”, he said. I guess I did pass through that phase at some point. Just thinking about the time passage made me realize that now is the time to do some more self-portraits – it’s not like I’m going to look any better in another 50 years!

The self-portrait on the right is my recent effort. Interestingly, it is inspired by the long dead Swedish artist, Anders Zorn, whom I have somehow been following on Instagram. I’ve been wanting to try something called the Zorn palette. Back when we studied with Danni, she was always pushing us to use more color and we didn’t even have black on our palette so we could make it out of colors. Anders Zorn is just the opposite and had an amazingly simple four color palette: black, white, cadmium red and yellow ochre. That’s it! I know they say the ancients didn’t see the color blue, but how odd to leave it out. My usual palette includes not only blue, but it still has all the colors Danni taught us to use. These colors you need for portrait painting, she said, were the same colors that you would use to paint a McIntosh apple. So it was a challenge for me to approach a self-portrait using just the Zorn palette. I kept thinking I would have to cheat, but I didn’t! – even though I fell short in getting my hair as purple as I like!

Call me ‘Beau’

– in which Dorn almost breaks into the rapper industry, but has branding issues.

eaching the Third Age is all about thinking about new careers. With Kathleen’s encouragement I decided it was time to become a rapper. I had already done most of the heavy lifting for the job—everyone knows that 90% of rapper success comes from having the right name, and I had picked out mine: “Beau Tox”.

But before I started, I had to make sure that some upstart rapper hadn’t already claimed this name, so I did an exhaustive search (using both Bing and Google). And it turns out the name is already being used by a Belgian techno-rapper. At least, I think he’s a rapper. There’s little background info on his site, and his tracks seem like easy-listening electro-pop background music with inoffensive (I don’t speak Belgian, but they sound inoffensive) lyrics delivered in rap style on a few of them.

I could probably survive a co-named competitor in faraway Belgium, but I had a bigger pig jostling for space at the Beau Tox trough: a social media star already has that name. He is apparently quite famous, mostly for being a lovable dog with a somewhat disfigured face.

Not encouraging. There are also Beau-Tox cosmetic surgery salons in Palm Beach, FL, Tribeca, NY, England, Australia, and probably elsewhere. I suspected this might be the case—the name is just too apt for that type of clinic to pass up—but I didn’t think this association would be close enough to be fatal to my career. After all, they sell Ice Tea and Ice Cubes in the grocery store, and those guys did fine.

More interestingly, there’s a Dick Tracy villian, the plastic surgeon “Dr. Beau Tox”, who gives new faces to criminals No Face and Prune Hilda. A vain Tess and Dick Tracy come in for facelifts as well, and criminal hijinks ensue, as they say. The comic can be read here, or there’s a short synopsis here.

comic: "Meanwhile... 'I gotta have a new face, Doctor Tox. But I can't decide between a Salvador Dali, or...' "

But my favorite name pre-empter (or I should say pre-emptress) was Carlötta Beautox—“actress, thinktress, influenceress”—whose adventures trying to make it big in Hollywood can be followed in an apple podcast. It’s a funny, friendly little number full of pop culture references and silly running jokes (like everyone pronouncing her stage name byew-tox).

I couldn’t stand up to this kind of competition. I thought about reverting to my runner-up rapper name (and believe me, it was a distant second), “Butt Tox”. But I ran the mandatory Google due diligence on it and found that it also had been pre-empted, and not even by fashionable items like those above! There was Butt-tox the toilet seat sanitizer, and an ad for buttock botox injections that includes this enticement,

IS BUTT-TOX THE INJECTION YOU NEVER KNEW YOU NEEDED? There’s lots of reasons you should be sticking Botox in your butt. And while I’ll examine a few of them here, with 100 degree days coming and WAY TOO MANY OF YOU leaving sweat stains on the subway, we’ll start here.

I know when I’m beaten. I’m giving up on the rapper business for something where the name competition is not as as cut-throat.

Maybe I’ll be a writer! Now, if I can only think of a pen name…

Thanks! Tell your friends about us if you like us!
Dorn
10/17/2019