Here are three lessons I learned from reading *The Devil in the White City,* a book on the construction of the Chicago World’s Fair (juxtaposed with a suave, murderous criminal), on human psychology and project management.

## 1. You will always be compared to what came before

Four short years before the Chicago World’s Fair, the French had their turn. At the Paris exhibition of 1889, they unveiled the Eiffel Tower–a majestic display of creativity and ingenuity.

America’s pride was hurt. Everyone in America thought they were the most creative and ingenious country. To be outshone by the French was an embarrassment. Chicago would help reignite its spirits.

But trying to “out Eiffel the Eiffel,” as the goal came be to known, would not be easy.

Chicago had to either beat the extravagance of the tower or be humiliated, bringing disgrace and shame upon America.

An interview in the *Chicago Tribune* captures the consensus at the time:

> The most marvelous exhibit of modern times or ancient times has now just closed successfully at Paris. Whatever you do is to be compared with that. If you equal it you have made a success. If you surpass it you have made a triumph.

If you fall below it you will be help responsibly by the whole America people for having assumed what you are not equal to.
>

**Lesson:** **If you try to imitate something that people have already experienced, you can’t just “build a taller tower.”** Your product, your offering, your service, has to be as new and unique as anything that came before, lest it just be compared to just trying to build a taller tower in a race to “out Eiffel the Eiffel.”

Chicago’s big unveiling was the Ferris Wheel. It was something so different and new that it captured people’s imagination in a unique way. The Eiffel Tower, though it was still an amazing feat of architecture, didn’t spin 2,000 people around in a circle. Chicago had successfully out Eiffled the Eiffel.

## 2. Simple and done well is better than extravagant and rushed

Rain was a menace to the fair. It would wash away the wet paint on buildings and ornate plants of the landscape that were already in the ground.

Frederick Olmstead, the chief architect of the fair, gave sound advice to his crew:

> Do not lay out to do anything in the way of decorative planting that you shall not be quite certain that you will have ample time and means to perfect of its kind. There be can little fault found with simple, neat turf. Do not be afraid of undecorated, smooth surfaces.
>

**Lesson: When a deadline is looming, do the best you can with the time you have, and don't overcommit.** There's nothing wrong with simple.

A good plan done well is better than a great plan done poorly.

## 3. When creating a scene or display, every detail matters

Olmstead, the landscape architect, insisted on not having steamboats on the fair’s waterways, even though they would be more efficient.

He wrote:

> Put in the waters unbecoming boats and the effect would be utterly disgusting, destroying the value of what would otherwise be the most valuable original feature of this Exposition.
>

**Lesson: Small details have a big impact. When they're done right, they create an extravagant scene. When ignored, they ruin it.**

Sometimes, you have to bite the bullet and spend more, or take the less efficient route, to create a great atmosphere or product.

Compliment this with my [book notes from ***********Devil in the White City](https://www.dltn.io/posts/devil-in-the-white-city)* or the founding President of Stanford’s [thoughts on education, politics, and life](https://www.dltn.io/posts/david-starr-jordan-on-life-education-and-politics).


Lessons learned from reading about the construction of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.

3 Lessons on Human Psychology and Project Management

"Do unconscious reminders of God influence people's willingness to comply with norms of impersonal fairness?", Joseph Henrich asks in chapter 4 of his book, [*The WEIRDest People in the World*](https://www.amazon.com/WEIRDest-People-World-Psychologically-Particularly-ebook/dp/B07RZFCPMD).

Turns out, they do.

[In a study conducted in Canada](https://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~ara/Manuscripts/Shariff_Norenzayan.pdf), to answer this very question, participants were given two tasks: First, to unscramble a series of words and make them into a coherent sentence. Afterward, they were asked to allocate $10 between themselves and a stranger. For the first part of the study, groups were unknowingly given either a set of 10 sentences that had God-related terms in them while a control group had sentences that were not God-related. An example given by Henrich in the book and cited in the academic paper reporting the study is this:

> Try creating a sentence from these words:
> 
> divine dessert the was =
> 
> (answer: the dessert was divine)

After completing the assignment, they were tasked with dividing $10 between themselves and a stranger. In the control group, the one with *no* God-related terms, participants only gave $2.60 to the stranger on average. The most common amount given in this group was $0.00. 40% of the participants in this group chose to not give any to the stranger.

In the experimental group, those who completed the task *with* God-related terms, gave, on average, $4.60 to the stranger. The most common amount allocated here was $5. Also, the percentage of people who chose to give nothing to the stranger fell from 40% to 12%.

It seems being reminded of God does have some influence over how people behave.

II.

Psychologists call this effect, *priming.* It explains the act of intentionally or unintentionally changing your behavior based on words, behaviors, or the environment. When you "prime" the bulb before mowing the lawn, you pump gas into the fuel line to ensure the engine starts easier. When someone "primes" you for an action, they do *something* that makes it easier for you to commit that action.

It's obvious the God-prime is real, as it has [been replicated by numerous studies](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=god-priming+studies&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart). What I want to know is **what else we're being primed to do.**

III.

One simple example of priming can be found at the movie theatre (RIP). Right before the movie starts and the lights dim, you're usually shown a high-def version of Coke being poured on ice with realistic sound effects that is followed by popcorn popping and maybe some MNM's jumping around on screen. The movie theatre is priming you to go buy Coke, popcorn, and some candy.

Seeing others faces is an example of priming as well. If you spend time with someone who is constantly happy, smiling, and joyful, you yourself are much more likely to be happy, smiling, and joyful.

A silly example, though very explanative, was something I once saw on TV when I was young, perhaps on Drake and Josh? One character asked another:

"How do you spell fork?" And then they were asked to say it, and then spell it again, and then say it one more time in rapid succession. They were then asked what people eat soup with. The character, being primed by the word fork, naturally said "Fork!" Like I said, silly, but effective at explaining an example of priming.

I'm sure there are many more examples in everyday life of being primed to do something that aren't obvious, I just can't seem to think of anymore right now. But as I've written previously on this blog, it's important to have language to describe certain aspects of life because your worldview is only as big as your language. I'm excited to see what other examples of priming I come across after thinking and writing about this–a classic [Baader-Meinhof phenomenon](https://lighthouse.mq.edu.au/article/july-2020/What-is-the-Baader-Meinhof-Phenomenon).

Do unconscious reminders of God influence people's willingness to comply with norms of impersonal fairness?

God-primes and Social Behavior

**I.**
Trying to change the behavior of someone who acts off instinct by persuading them with logic and reason is a formula destined for failure. You cannot combat intuition or "feeling" through data, logical conclusions, or experimental studies. The two are in direct opposition to one another.

Scott Alexander, on his [Astral Codex Ten blog](https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/contra-dynomight-on-sexy-in-laws?s=r), has described these two driving forces as "built in micro-managing instincts" and "human reason." In an effort to explain the two, he illustrates the all too common story of a daughter wanting to marry someone she's "in love with" while her parents wish for her to marry someone else, usually someone who has a prestigious profession. The daughter is acting on instinct. For whatever reason, she believes this guy is a good life partner for her. He could be funny, handsome, or smart, but whatever it is, she's basing her decision on an instinct. The parents, who want their daughter to have a good husband that will support her, be a good father, and give them incredible grandchildren, are acting on reason. They know this other guy has a more prestigious profession than the current love affair, which means more money and a stable life, which leads to healthy offspring. It makes the most logical sense for the daughter to pick the guy behind door number two. Often, though, she goes with her instinct and not rationality. Is this the better decision? Or just how most people decide and it seems to be working out, so people keep doing it?

That is a perfect example of the dichotomy between human intuition and human reason, which makes me ask, which is better? Or, is there not a better way and the best possible route is to combine the two–using instincts to guide your initial options and logic to do your due diligence?

**II.**
Intuition, or "gut-feeling" as it is casually called, is part of the automatic part of your brain that processes information. [*Psychology Today*](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/intuition) gives the example of "highway hypnosis," which is what happens when you leave your house in the morning and arrive at work fifteen minutes later but you don't have a conscious thought about the drive there. The automatic part of your brain took over and did what it does best, rely on past situations (your drive every single day to work) to formulate and create the best outcome. In this case, it's your arriving to work safe and sound.

A paper on [intuition and insight](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5020639/) explains that intuition is a "non-analytical thought process that results in certain behavior that is not based on an exclusively deliberate and stepwise search for a solution." You just know when you know. The interesting thing about intuition, as described in academic fields, is that most people agree intuition is formed by your brain scanning and organizing events in your long term memory that are similar to the one at hand. But in our case, of the daughter using intuition to pick her life partner, her brain doesn't *have* any long-term memories to scan that can illuminate a path forward. She's never picked a life partner before. Maybe she's read about certain traits that are admirable in books, seen them in movies, or heard about through close friends or more peer-based family, but certainly not in her own life. So, does this mean some aspects of intuition are innately given to us, such as how to pick a life partner, while others are learned experiences? That makes sense.

Most sources explain intuition as the choice your brain thinks is the best which is deduced by examining past experiences and events stored in your long-term memory. To me, it seems that intuition is a personal form of analytical human reason. You aren't actively going through past situations in your life and comparing how they turned out to what you want to happen now, your brain is. But if a third party, in our case the parents, actively went through past situations in your life or their life and compared how they turned out to what they want to happen now, that would be called *human reasoning*, the other decision-making tactic I'm exploring in this essay.

So can intuition be described as passive-personal reasoning? I think so. Instead of personal intuition and third-party reason being two separate methods of thinking, they could be the *same* method of thinking, but one is unconscious and personal while the other is conscious and impersonal.

**III.**
If the two forms of insight are essentially the same, passive-personal reasoning and active-impersonal reasoning, why do they lead to different outcomes?

Dynomight, [in the post that started the Astral Codex Star article](https://dynomight.net/hotness/), wonders the same thing:

> After all, _why_ do you want to marry someone hot? Evolution made you that way because hotness is a proxy for good genetics. Your genes want you to reproduce with someone hot so that you will produce lots of kids (who will have lots of kids). Your parents care who you marry because evolution tuned them to _help_ you reproduce your genes (which are also their genes).
> 
> So… that seems confusing. Don’t you and your parents have the same priorities? Why would you give such different weights to different characteristics of who you breed with?

They propose two theories:

**First, strategic conflict.**  Maybe the daughter and the parents actually *don't* want the same thing:

>Your parents share an equal number of genes with all their grandchildren. But you share twice as many genes with your kids as with your nieces and nephews.
>
>If you marry a doctor, maybe they’ll help your niece with tuition or convince her to major in pre-med instead of comparative Sanskrit opera studies. But if you marry someone with amazing genes, your niece will get none of them.

If the daughter marries an amazing doctor or lawyer, the families value on the social hierarchy will elevate. This is good news for the parents in two ways. First, they are proud their daughter married someone prestigious. Second, they now have the benefit of a higher social hierarchy passed on to *all* their grandchildren. If the daughter married some handsome hunk who was worthless, a few of their grandkids may look good but the rest of their grandkids (and their family tree) don't really get anything out of that deal. How rude.

**The second theory** is that perhaps the parents, as they have aged, just changed what they focused on. Sure, the conflict mentioned above may be there on some unconscious level, but that's not why they differ from their daughter's mate selection.

**IV.**
As we come to the conclusion of this essay, are we able to tell which insight-seeking practice is better than the other? No. But I am able to conclude, with some hesitation, that intuition and third-party human reasoning are two sides of the same coin and that intrigues me. Perhaps the best way to go forward with big decisions is to use both strategies: passive-intuition to determine your choices and find a path forward and then calling on reason to do your due diligence. If you stumble upon something that is an apparent red flag, you now know which choice *not* to go with and can determine your options once again.

Let's say the daughter, Cheyanne, loves Kyle. They've spent the last five years together and there's a massive soft spot for Kyle in Cheyanne's heart. They've graduated high school together, moved in with one another, and are experiencing important life moments together. But, Kyle is a loser. Cheyanne ends up paying the bills because Kyle can't get a job and on the rare chances he does get a job, he gets fired not long after for showing up late, yelling at customers, and has been caught stealing more than once.

Since Cheyanne *loves* Kyle, he is an obvious long-term mate option. Her intuition says he's going to change and once he does, he'll make a great father/husband. As they get closer and closer to tying the knot, the feelings of love and admiration subside and Cheyanne starts to deal with the very real, "Oh my gosh, is this going to be my life?" feelings. Now, she starts down the road of human reason. Once she does, she sees it is lined with red flags and caution signs, nudging her closer and closer to make the decision all her friend's have been persuading her to do from the start.

Is this how that situation would *really* play out? I'm not sure, but that's what I imagine a combination of passive-personal reasoning and active-personal reasoning would look like, but I don't *really* know the answer.

I'm okay with not knowing the answer. I think it's a hard question to find an answer to. But I'm proud of the ideas and rabbit holes I explored because I'm wanting to write about things [*as I'm learning about them*](https://twitter.com/mollyfmielke/status/1526977870605721600?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw), and not with a hindsight bias. I'm closer to understanding human intuition vs. human reasoning now than I was when I started writing (and I hope you are too) and I'd say that's a job well done any day of the week.

Farewell.

There are two forms of intelligence we draw on when making decisions: instincts and reason. I wanted to know which is a better strategy to rely on and why? Or, is there a better strategy? Perhaps instinct and intelligence are two sides of the same coin working in tandem with one another.

Which is better: instinct or reason?

"You're a different person when you're around your family," my wife commented to me one day on the way home from my parent's house. She went on to explain that I'm actually funny (which hurt a bit, not going to lie), am much more willing to eject a thought or opinion into the conversation than I am with others, and that I just seem more relaxed.

All of that is true. I enjoy spending time with my family and would say I'm more open to ejecting into the conversation, which got me thinking about a long-held debate in psychology, *do circumstances determine someone's behavior, or is it their character?* This is often referred to as the situation vs. person debate.

You probably won't be acting the same way at a funeral as you would on a Friday night in a bar. If you do, you probably lack some social awareness. But even someone who does act the same in those situations could reason that circumstances *don't* effect their behavior and they are solely reliant on their person to do so. I often hear from people like this that they're "not going to change who I am," or, "I'm just being 100% me." Which I understand and admire the confidence, but being 100% you can't be used as an excuse to make other people feel uncomfortable. That's just called being a jerk.

For evidence to the circumstance argument, we can look to the [Stanford Prison Experiment](https://www.prisonexp.org/). If you're unfamiliar, the goal of the experiment was to test how situational variables influenced the behaviors of 1). people with authority and 2). people who were "lesser than." Volunteer college students were split into two groups - one group were the guards and the other were the prisoners. The "jail" was a Stanford basement that contained makeshift cells. The experiment is widely controversial and started a world-wide conversation about ethics and morality when experimenting on human subjects. The experiment was supposed to last two weeks, but ended on the sixth day due to the wild behaviors and psychological abuse directed toward the prisoners from the guards. It's safe to say the situation influenced the guards behavior.

We can also look at the [Stanley Milgrim experiment](https://www.simplypsychology.org/milgram.html), which was conducted to see how far people would go for an authoritative figure giving them instructions that was clearly inflicting pain on someone, but it too reveals how certain people's behaviors can change given the circumstances.

My hypothesis is that people's behavior can be based on any given range. With flexible and fun on one side and upset and angry on the other. Some people have very wide ranges and some people have very small ranges, but the range is fixed. What moves the current operating range to one side or another is the circumstance. So if they have a wide range of behaviors and are in a fun environment, they are going to be fun and flexible. If they are in a sad situation, the situation gauge will shift toward the other end and they will become sad. So, **the situation determine's your behavior but the behaviors that are able to be shown in any given situation are based on personality.**

It's a classic "both/and" resolution. What do you think?

The person versus situation conversation is a long-held debate in psychology. My hypothesis is that personality creates behaviors and circumstances bring those behaviors out.

Personality creates behaviors. Circumstances reveal them.

One Sentence Summary
--------------------

Tipping Points can be caused by the right people, with the right information, in the right context; all we have to do is find those variables.

Two Main Takeaways
------------------

1.  If content isn't sticking or getting through to an audience, don't change the content. Change the way the content is delivered.
2.  Having a clean work space, providing a loving home, being in a nice, clean neighborhood, and enjoying where we work - anything about our environment has a much more dramatic impact than what we think or what we say.

Chapter 1: The Three Rules of Epidemics
---------------------------------------

-   Epidemics are the function of people who transmit infectious agents, the infectious agent itself, and the environment in which the infectious agent is operating
-   The Tipping Point is the moment of Critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point
-   The Law of the Few -
-   One very influential persons hops on a trend, or gets a lot of people sick, starting the epidemic.
-   The Stickiness Factor -
-   There are specific ways of making information memorable. Simple changes can be made to the presentation and how information is structured that make a *huge* difference on the impact of the message
-   The Power of Context -
-   The context in which people incur a stimuli has a massive impact on how that person responds - not necessarily the stimuli itself.
-   *Humans are a lot more sensitive to the environment than we think.*

Chapter 2: The Law of the Few
-----------------------------

-   There are very few people who have enough influence and impact to tip an epidemic. But those who do, start waves in things they pursue.
-   The messenger matters. They're the ones who make something stick

Chapter 3: The Stickiness Factor
--------------------------------

-   Sesame Street started telling stories more and in the stories were lessons taught. They found the more they taught things in narrative form, the more kids remembered the lessons
-   The ideas in Sesame Street were not profound. Instead, the understood how they presented the messages and lessons was what meant a kid remembering the lesson or not. Changing the way information is presented can have a massive impact on how well things stick.
-   There are people out there who can start epidemics, you just have to find them - The Law of the Few. There is also certain ways to package information that makes it irresistible and will move people to action, you just have to find out what that is - The Stickiness Factor

The Power of Context (Part One)
-------------------------------

-   The Broken Window Theory - Criminologist James Q. Wilson and George Kelling; Argued that crime is the result of disorder. Therefore, if broken windows in homes go un repaired for certain lengths of time, people will assume there is no order and crime will be inevitable.
-   Following that rule, epidemics can be tipped by tinkering with the smallest form of environment or context
-   Fundamental Attribution Error - When interpreting other people's behavior, humans overestimate character traits, and underestimate the importance of the situation and context one is in.
-   *The best person in the world could steal money if in the right circumstance and context. On the opposite end, the worst person in the world could change depending on the situation and circumstance they're in.*
-   The immediate context of behavior is more important than the context of your thoughts

The Power of Context (Part Two)
-------------------------------

-   Small, close-knit groups have the power to magnify the epidemic of a potential message or idea.

Tipping Points can be caused by the right people, with the right information, in the right context; all we have to do is find those variables.

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

## Impressions

*I didn't really know what to think of this book before I started reading it. I really like Morgan Housel's blogs and so it was a no brainer whether or not to buy his book when it came out. I was pleasantly surprised with the actionable insights and takeaways for managing money. Though the focus is mainly on the psychology, as you could imagine, it does give some practical tips.*

*This book would pair well with [Ramit Sethi's I Will Teach You To Be Rich.](https://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/) Housel's book gives some psychological factors to think about and Sethi gives more practical advice on how to actually manage your money.*

## Actionable Takeaways
1. Just because you say you will do something when everything goes to hell doesn't mean you actually will. It's easy to *say* you'll buy when the market crashes and there is blood in the streets. But it's a totally different thing to actually do that when your portfolio is down 35% in one day.
2. Usually when people think about the market crashing 30%, they *only* think about the market crashing 30%. The problem with that is that when the market actually crashes 30%, it's because there is a massive deadly pandemic or a horrific terroist attack.
3. Managing money well is all about behavior.
4. Every decision someone makes, makes sense to them at the time. If you're baffled at how someone is behaving, try to think like they do. No one makes a decision thinking, "This makes no sense to me but I'm going to do it."
5. Good investing isn't getting crazy high, one-off returns. Instead, it's getting pretty average returns for an absolutely unbelievable amount of time.
6. Planning is important, but the most important part of every plan is to plan on the plan not going according to plan.
7. Saving is as much psychological as it is tactical. Yes it requires you to physically put money away in an account somehow, but it also requires that you spend less. And you can't spend less if you're worried about what other people think of you.
8. Just because something hasn't happened before doesn't mean it can't happen. No one expected The Great Depression until it did. No one assumed WW2 would break out until it did. Don't use history, or the lackthereof as a predictor of future catastrophes. The future will most likely be much worse.
9. If you make too little money, you will never be able to retire. If you make too much money, you regret working so hard all of those years. The solution? Stay in the middle.
10. Not everyone is playing the same game. And one when group of people playing for a certain outcome get their moves and tactics from another group of people playing for a different outcome, the result is catastrophic.
11. Wealth is created by suppressing what you could buy today in order to have more stuff or more options in the future.
12. Use the money you earn to buy control over your time. Because the ability to do what you want, when you want, with who you want, is the biggest wealth benefit of all.

## Quotes
- "History never repeats itself. Man always does."
- "Be careful who you praise and admire. Be careful who you look down upon and wish to avoid becoming."
- "Getting money is one thing. Keeping it is another."
- "“It’s not whether you’re right or wrong that’s important,” George Soros once said, “but how much money you make when you’re right and how much you lose when you’re wrong.” You can be wrong half the time and still make a fortune."
- "But doing something you love on a schedule you can’t control can feel the same as doing something you hate."
- "Every bit of savings is like taking a point in the future that would have been owned by someone else and giving it back to yourself."
- "The historical odds of making money in U.S. markets are 50/50 over one-day periods, 68% in one-year periods, 88% in 10-year periods, and (so far) 100% in 20-year periods. Anything that keeps you in the game has a quantifiable advantage."
- "A good rule of thumb for a lot of things in life is that everything that can break will eventually break
- "Bubbles do their damage when long-term investors playing one game start taking their cues from those short-term traders playing another."
- "Growth is driven by compounding, which always takes time. Destruction is driven by single points of failure, which can happen in seconds, and loss of confidence, which can happen in an instant
- "Expecting things to be bad is the best way to be pleasantly surprised when they’re not."
- "Coming to terms with how much you don’t know means coming to terms with how much of what happens in the world is out of your control."
- "Use money to gain control over your time, because not having control of your time is such a powerful and universal drag on happiness. The ability to do what you want, when you want, with who you want, for as long as you want to, pays the highest dividend that exists in finance."
- "I can afford to not be the greatest investor in the world, but I can’t afford to be a bad one."

## Bonus (Stories, illustrations, & things that made me go wow.)
- A quote about another partner Warren Buffett did business with and how he wanted to get rich quick:
	 > Warren, Charlie, and Rick made investments together and interviewed business managers together. Then Rick kind of disappeared, at least relative to Buffett and Munger’s success. Investor Mohnish Pabrai once asked Buffett what happened to Rick. Mohnish recalled: [Warren said] “Charlie and I always knew that we would become incredibly wealthy. We were not in a hurry to get wealthy; we knew it would happen. Rick was just as smart as us, but he was in a hurry.” What happened was that in the 1973–1974 downturn, Rick was levered with margin loans. And the stock market went down almost 70% in those two years, so he got margin calls. He sold his Berkshire stock to Warren—Warren actually said “I bought Rick’s Berkshire stock”—at under $40 a piece. Rick was forced to sell because he was levered.
- > In Pharaonic Egypt … scribes tracked the high-water mark of the Nile and used it as an estimate for a future worst-case scenario. The same can be seen in the Fukushima nuclear reactor, which experienced a catastrophic failure in 2011 when a tsunami struck. It had been built to withstand the worst past historical earthquake, with the builders not imagining much worse—and not thinking that the worst past event had to be a surprise, as it had no precedent.