El Farol Bar problem

I found this interesting game theory problem in the book Traffic (171):

This is a problem sketched out by the economist W. Brian Arthur, after a bar in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The hypothetical scenario imagines that one hundred people would like to go to the bar to listen to live music, but it seems too crowded if more than sixty show up. How does any one person decide whether or not to go? If they go one night and it's too crowded, do they return the next night, on the thought that people will have been discouraged - or will others have precisely the same thought? Aurthur found, in a simulation, that the mean attendance did indeed hover around sixty, but that the attendance numbers for each night continued to oscillate up and down, for the full one hundred weeks of the trial. Which means that one's chances of going on the right night are essentially random, as people continue to try to adapt their behavior.

The interesting part of this problem, born out of a real observation of trying to have a fun night at the bar, is that while you are trying to act based on guesses of what others are going to do, they are doing the same thing about you. While you are modifying your behavior based on what they did last night, they are doing the same thing.

The moral of the story? Today is a different day than yesterday.

We like static thinking. In the good times, and even in the times that are a little rough, we hope that everything will mostly be just like it was yesterday so that I can basically predict what today and tomorrow will be like. But you can't, not even for the people and the organizations and the circumstances that you think you know best.

I am all for making plans. But the problem is we like making plans based on static think. I heard this analogy, and unfortunately I cannot remember where the analogy came from; if you know, post it, and I'll give proper citation. The metaphor goes something like this (with a little of my own concoction thrown in):

Many people look at the future like a well-built highway -- straight roads, well-defined boundaries, and with the proper markings that show you where you are and how far you've gone. The beat of time is the stripes along the middle that are always the same length and look just like the last hundred miles that you've traveled. You can plan out your route with expectations that little will change along this road. People with this view of the future try to build their lives into lamborghinis - luxuriant, shiny, and it gets to the goal in a hurry.

But the future doesn't look like that, it's not static, and they run into obstacles that puncture the tires, dent the sides, if not an all out crash. The economy tanks, their 401 crashes, their kids have problems, they hate their new boss, etc. And here's the weird thing - we still hope that the future is static, either because we can navigate ourselves out of that world that we knew, or we happy just whining about what we know.

Here is a better view of the future: it's more like the Baja 1000. You can see what is on the hill in front of you for a short distance, but other than that you have no idea what is on the other side. Be prepared for anything. You need grit and determination more than shiny and fast. You will get dents and scrapes, but that only helps prepare you for the next round.

Keep the expectations of your environment and circumstances down, and expectations of yourself up. Work your tail off for what is in front of you.

Enjoy the ride!

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Five Stages of Grief

I thought this would be helpful for people if they are struggling with an important loss in their life. The following is Elisabeth Kubler-Ross's Five Stages of Grief:

1) Denial
2) Anger
3) Bargaining
4) Depression
5) Acceptance

While not everyone probably goes through all the steps, and it is not in any necessary order, I know I have certainly had some feelings of anger and depression after leaving my last position in the middle of a recession! I have to laugh at myself when I find that I'm bargaining somehow with fate to just let me have this or that and I'll somehow make it up.

Acceptance of the situation or circumstances is certainly the best stage to be at, but acceptance of status quo is something I'll never accept.

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Pandemic

The word "pandemic" conjures images of something very bad waiting to spread. In today's world, which is becoming urbanized and travel is easy and world-wide, this is a very real threat. Interestingly, games have popped up around this idea.

There is the flash video game in which you are a virus trying to kill off the world. You are trying to mutate and spread before you can become contained. It's you against the world.

Then there is the board game my wife and I played recently with the Willisses (Shayna - this is for you). In this version, you try and contain the virus. It was interesting because instead of people or teams competing against each other, everybody had to work together to try and stop the virus from spreading. Everybody wins or everybody loses.

Everybody wins or everybody loses. It is a very strange concept when we talk games, and really about our way of life. In other games, you race to get the most points or to get to the finish line. You do what you have to in sports to score more points than the other team. There are winners and there are losers.

And it spills out into other areas of life. We do what we have to to get a better grade than the other people in class. We work harder than co-workers to get the promotion. Bonuses are dealt out by ranking. We compete for attention. Relationships have battlegrounds. If I don't take, someone else will and I will lose out. If I stay with the crowd, I remain average - and who wants average?

What would it be like if you played the game of real life as if everybody wins or everybody loses? You pull hard for that family member; because if they lose, you can't replace family. You go overboard to help the struggling co-worker; because if they get left behind or are fired, the company loses money and you lose learning how to be a great team member.

Standing over others may be the loneliest spot, and ultimately the loser - by making everything a competition we are spreading a pandemic of individuality. Using diverse talents and gifts to help raise the group makes everyone a winner.

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Cutters go to the back of the line

Let me guess something about you - you don't like it when people cut in line in front of you when they didn't wait their turn. Maybe it isn't just the line at the store or at the DMV or at the amusement park (have you ever just wanted to throw your cotton candy at them?), but it is also who gets the promotion, who gets the job interview, which of your peers is doing better, which students get the attention.

Tom Vanderbilt says that it is not only a phenomenon that happens as you watch cars go by to get to the front of the line while you patiently wait in the middle (from Traffic, 42):

What really seems to rankle us is seeing people get ahead. This is why, says Richard Larson, director of the Center for Engineering Systems Fundamentals at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and one of the world's leading authorities on queues, any number of companies - from banks to fast-food chains - have switched from systems in which multiple lines feed multiple servers to a single, serpentine line... Why? Social justice, says Larson. "If you have the single serpentine line, you're guaranteed first come, first served. If you have the multiple lines, you have what happens at McDonald's at lunchtime. You have the stress of joining a line with high likelihood that somebody who's joined a queue next to you will get served before you. People get really irritated with that."

If you can do something about it, maybe it is better to think about the system, or any system that you can do something about, and to figure out who needs to get what. How can we optimize it for everyone? After daydreaming about the proper punishment for those people, figure out what you can do about it in situations that really matter.

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I'm getting passed!

I am almost done reading a great book called Traffic: Why We Drive The Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) by Tom Vanderbilt. It is fun reading because all of the aggravations and behaviors that people exhibit while driving heavy machinery is discussed. Is it better to take the first available parking spot, or wait for the one right in front of the door? Where do those phantom traffic jams come from? Why is it weird catching someone's eye in the car next to you?

I'll pull out some of the observations that are interesting to me, and we'll have a great time learning why we both think we're above average drivers. Here is one that seems relevant to most of my life at the moment (42):

Drivers spend most of their time - anywhere from 80 percent to over 90 percent, studies have found - looking at the forward roadway. This includes, of course, the adjacent lane; estimates are that for every two glances we make at our own lane, we make one glance at the next lane - simply so we can actually stay in our lane. This means we are highly aware of vehicles passing us. We spend only about 6 percent of our driving time looking in the rearview mirror. In other words, we're much more aware of what is passing us than what we have passed.

You know you've thought the same thing as you sit in a lane of traffic, apparently the slow one. So you change lanes, and of course this always happens to you - now you are getting passed again! Well, you really are feeling more pain by cars passing you than the joy of passing others (admit it, there is a little ego boost as you wave "So long Sucker!" to the cars you are passing).

Frankly, I don't think this is just a car phenomenon. It is easy to feel like people are passing me by in life as well.

"Oh look, another person got that job in front of me." "There is someone else who has hit it big." "I wonder who is building that gargantuan house in our neighborhood?" "Why does it seem like everyone has a bigger dog than us?" (Ok, everyone does have a larger dog than us, but I'm actually pretty happy about that.)

There is something to counting your blessings. I've got it pretty good. Comparing myself to others is a losing proposition, no matter where I end up. What is the best that I can do, in my circumstances? And stop counting those passing cars, turn up the radio and sing (some of you should probably roll up the windows).

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You Are In Control

Well, you actually have very little control over most of the things that you want to manipulate. How did you like that word "manipulate"? It has that sort of greasy type of meaning and feeling, especially if we think it is directed at us, yet the vast majority of our frustrations in life are associated with a failed attempt at manipulating someone or some thing. Yet Goethe says we are in control:

"I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather."

I saw this quote in a daily email that I receive from ScreamFree Parenting, a group that espouses the need for parents to grow up if they want to be influential in the lives of their children. The message is difficult to swallow because we all want the easy fix or the easy technique that doesn't really push me around but gets me what I desire.

We all want to be the bulldozer, not the bulldozee.

I know this, yet it is so stinkin difficult, until I realize that it is also easy. The difficult part really isn't controlling your emotions, it's being consistent enough about it that you create a brand new way of being you.

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Tragedy of the Commons

Have you heard of the "Tragedy of the Commons"? As I understand it, it was first described by biologist Garrett Hardin. The cartoon basically describes the situation (if someone can tell me where the cartoon came from, I'll give them credit).

The basic situation is that if any one of the four shepherds chooses to be the nice guy and only stick with his 4 sheep, or only let his 4 sheep graze on equal grass, then he will feel trapped thinking that maybe one of the other shepherds might take more. It is a way of thinking that encourages you to take while you can, because no one else is going to.

This explains why we would make decisions that we know would ultimately hurt others, and thus ourselves. We know that we are relational creatures, yet we constantly make decisions that harm those relations - and thus, ultimately ourselves. Because sometimes we get the mistaken illusion that sometimes, someone else should sacrifice or get out of the way so that I can prosper. But it never works that way.

I think the Tragedy of the Commons is a common reality, but that is not the way that life has to work. When you realize that being a Giver rather than a Taker provides for everyone, then we all prosper. But you have to trust, and you have to give first.

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You Bought What?

How do you choose what you are going to buy? Let's face it, you didn't just buy that _________ because it was the only one available and you desperately needed it. Did you realize that you just participated in building meaning into a cultural symbol? All those cliques and groups from high school are alive and well, with maybe a few more wrinkles and scars. You're still trying to take your school lunch and sit at the table with the geeks/jocks/cheerleaders/kickers/goths/etc. No one likes sitting alone.

Rob Walker, in Buying In (5), says that there are basically only a few rational (rational is a big assumption, but let's just go with it) ways to choose a product:

1) Price
2) Convenience
3) Quality
4) Pleasure
1/2) Ethics (more on this later)

What happens when there is very little difference between the products among these rational ways of choosing? For example, how much difference is there really among handbags? At amazon.com, there are 32,363 choices. Is there a clear choice of number one based on quality? Apparently there is:

"Buying a $5,000 handbag just because it's a status symbol is a sign of weakness," states fashion icon Miuccia Prada (5).

Most of what you purchase, if you live in the USA, is based on your perceived identity, and thus brands. You might as well tattoo them on your head, Stephon Marbury style, 'cause you're already wearing them, carrying them, talking/listening to them, driving in them.

You can't really escape it, but you can be aware of it, and choose thoughtfully rather than as if you're trying to push your way onto that last seat at an already crowded table.

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White Knights?

Here is one of my favorite quotes from the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight:

Bruce Wayne: That man in Burma, did you ever catch him?
Alfred Pennyworth: Oh yes.
Bruce Wayne: How?
Alfred Pennyworth: We burned the forest.

One of the big questions in the movie is: Do the ends justify the means? Perhaps you've heard of that question before. Honestly, I'm not sure many of us are sure of what ends we are even surely heading for.

When you think of Enron, when you think of the Rwanda genocide, (you should think of coltan), when you think of oil, its easy to see that sometimes we make deals with the devil so we can have what we want.

Hey, I know it's easy for me to say. I complain about $4/gallon as much as anybody. But maybe it isn't an either/or situation. Maybe there are ways that we can continue to grow in wealth without it being at the expense of others. Maybe there are ways that we can have our industrialized society without it being at the expense of the earth. Maybe we can still have good and fast transportation without fighting over a finite commodity. It's possible, and it's happening in some corners. Maybe we could do something great without having to be famous.

There are no ends that are worth sacrificing the value of people and our environment. But maybe we don't have to. So often we justify our own darkness to use it against the other darkness. We need more "white knights" out there that can help us with the ends without sacrificing our humanity with the means.

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You Are In Control

In the book Buying In, Walker quotes the experts as saying that the "new consumer" is now in control of the marketplace. We have all the information, we have the power to choose rather than a brand being foisted upon us. Really?

Walker goes on to ask:

So what would constitute proof that the consumer is "boss" and "in control" in some way that's new and unprededented? Lower credit card balances? A conspicuous absence of logoed apparel on city streets and in malls? A disappearance of consumer fads, trends, and crazes? A decreasing amount of advertising? Shrinking landfills? Bigger and more effective boycotts of unhealthy or ethically suspect products? Increased saving rates? Maybe - but of course, none of this is happening. Instead, one thing did happen between 2000 and 2006 - right as the new consumer was said to be bossing corporate America around like never before - was that the profits of Fortune 500 companies soared; indeed, companies in the "consumer staples" category of that famous index saw their profits more than double. This despite the fact that the real wages of most Americans were, at best, flat. During precisely the same period, the personal savings rate actually fell into negative territory for the first time since the Great Depression.

I don't know about you, but that depresses me. I think I need to go buy some Twinkies, or maybe some new jump-man sneaker, to make me feel better...

But here is the thing - you are in control. No, really. I may not be the trendiest guy ever (probably not even in your top 25 trendiest people you know), but my guess is that buying practically may even be its own trend. In a future post, we'll chat about Walker's point that there really isn't much difference between the products, so then it becomes a matter of which brand do I want to associate myself with.

We have so many choices, that sometimes it can be paralyzing; this is the subject of the book The Paradox of Choice. Apparently, the thought never enters our head that we don't have to buy at all.

How many boxes of stuff do you have that you never use anymore? What if you got rid of everything you didn't use in the last month? Heresy! Next week we'll chat about how to decide to buy something.

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Addicted To Secrets

Every week I go to PostSecret. The basic gist is this: people send in an anonymous postcard with images and words that tell a secret of their life. I'm not sure exactly how I feel reading these deep secrets - the closest thing may be like how you stare at an auto accident as you drive by.

Some of the secrets make you just hurt for people, some are joyful, and some make you cringe. But you almost can't help but wish that your secret was right there with them.

Reading that blog is like being at an archaeological dig, uncovering a culture. Except that culture is your neighborhood, maybe even inside your home.

Telling your secrets isn't a new thing. It's mandated by the letter from James in the New Testament! The problem is trusting the people around us with this part of us, that part that isn't the smiley face and "How ya doin' Just fine."

What's the worst that could happen if you really just told people that secret? Rejection. It's just another indicator of how much we need community, yet at the same time we hold back from full communal envelopment.

Do you have someone that you feel you could tell anything? Do it. If you have to, send a postcard first. You are definitely not alone.

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Conferences

Last week I was at a conference for my profession, but I'll leave the conference unnamed. As has been the case for most conferences that I have attended, several sessions were very good, several were ok, and a number of them were real snoozers. One of the especially irritating aspects is that one very well known minister and author (who has written a book that was on the best-selling list for quite a while) spoke one night - the exact same speech he did at a different conference last year. At least at that particular session, I was far more productive going into the lobby and writing notes on changes that I would like to see in my own context. The best part of a conference is finding the one or two great sessions and using the others to map out your thoughts.

What is the best conference that you have attended?

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More Journeys

So now I am in Pittsburgh, PA! For all my southern friends, it was about 75 degrees yesterday; don't worry, I hear it may get all the way up to 90 at some point.

If you've never ridden across the country with your family, everyone should do it at some point. Not only because you get to see some different scenery - such as the flatlands, the hills, the people who populate the gas stations off of highways - and not only because you get to experience new thrills - such as sitting inside what feels like a dryer to get to the top of the arch in St Louis (thanks for the image, Rory) - but you get to experience your family.

There is nothing like all day and night in close quarters with your family for a few days. There are great moments and there are low moments, and no running from either. Nancy and I were driving separate vehicles and at one point I had convinced her that all 3 kids needed to be together for a while, which conveniently left me by myself for a short time. That is, until Nancy called on the cell and said, "You are taking one of the kids and I don't care which one."

There were moments I hope to treasure, such as my five year old telling me how to drive and pass other cars, singing with my daughter (which shows her great love that she even enjoyed it), and talking about books with my ten year old. Holding hands with my wife under the arch and walking next to the Mississippi river.

Even the conflicts were teachable, at least in retrospect. We need to be able to live together and the knowledge that these people I am with are valuable and worth crossing barriers for gets you through. And we do need each other, especially for those moments when I am not acting as valuable as God sees me.

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The People We Need (More on Conversations)

I love this audio clip of Two Rabbis (thanks to Wade Hodge's blog for providing it).

I love that story because we desperately need people in our lives to challenge what we are doing and thinking. But at the same time, it is so hard to receive challenges, much less ask for them.

I have a wonderful relationship with a friend here in town, JJ, in which it never fails that we argue over theology every time we get together - and we love it! Nancy and I also have a couple friend in which we will occasionally disagree about something, and then we hug and keep moving along.

Somehow you just have to get over the fact that it is ok for people to disagree with you; besides, you're probably wrong or need to think about some issues from different angles, and you can't unless you can have those kind of conversations. I suppose the trick is determining which people really do mean it or take it personally and which don't.

I heard a quote about a decade ago from Bart Campolo that our theology changes over time, yet our faith is what is truly important. Distinguishing between the two is important. If you don't like people challenging your thoughts, then maybe you are relying on having perfect ideology rather than a loving relationship, and frankly I don't know anyone who has a perfect ideology.

Have you spoken with someone lately that come from a different place or just thinks differently? How do you challenge yourself so that you continue to grow?

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Sacred Journey, Part 1

I am fascinated with the idea of how we view the sacredness of life and living. We live in a dualistic culture that separates the spiritual and the secular. Just having a word such as "spiritual" means that we then must have things that are not "spiritual." What if that is not the case? What if heaven, and God, are not way up in the sky, or looking over at us from another galaxy, but are in reality right here, right now?

I believe Gary Thomas in his book Sacred Marriage is on to something when he says (p. 13), "What if God designed marriage to make us holy more than to make us happy?"

I would like to explore different avenues of our lives that we often take for granted or run roughshod over rather than thinking through what it means in that moment. For example, what if you made cooking a sacred event? What if you made eating a meal with family or other people a sacred event?

I think there may be some biblical support for that, and I'd like to ask some questions about what it might look like. Is there a danger in overthinking this? Maybe, but we have so underthought the little things in our lives that we get to the end chasing the "big" dreams and learn nothing. Is there a danger in making every thing "sacred" so that nothing is sacred, or getting too deep into the details? Maybe. Let's find out.

Here is my bigger fear - I get to the end of a week and look back. Did I grow? Did I learn? Was I alive in the moments? Are my relationships with people, my environment, and my God more alive or more numb?

I hope this isn't like talking to myself as I walk along - I might look a little crazy. Join in...

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