Desmond Morris was always fascinated by animals. A scientist in the strictest sense of the word, Morris has sought throughout his life to reach the nearest thing to perfect objectivity in scientific observation, and thus to develop provable conclusions regarding animal and human behavior. Born in Purton, England, in 1928, Morris dove headfirst into the nascent study of zoology, in the 1950’s, which was in its first stages at that moment. Morris was disquieted by what he felt was excessive interference into animals’ natural states when they were studied; most zoologists at the time carried out their studies in a laboratory environment. How can we presume to study the animal kingdom with objectivity if we keep interfering with it?, he wondered. Therefore, he rejected this investigative premise and always tried to study animals in their natural habitats; he excelled at discovering profound behavioral indicators in the subtlest of details.

After obtaining his Ph.D. from Oxford University, Morris focused his studies predominantly on primates—he even had a popular TV show in the sixties in England called Zoo Time. Gradually, though, Morris’s study of primates led him inevitably to the most developed primate: humans. Since that time, Morris has only gained popularity, especially since the publication of the bestselling The Naked Ape (1969), which was translated into 23 languages. Morris expressed at the time that out of all the primate species, humankind is the only one with no bodily hair; this evolved from necessity, according to him— because when men had to hunt, they had to make sure their mates would not leave them for someone else: therefore, having less hair meant that we are more sensitive to touch and affection, and thus more prone to being faithful. Various scholars and scientist attacked his claims as unrealistic, arguing that this teleological argument (that is, focused almost exclusively on the ends of each action) was too limited.

Morris has become more an more popular as the years go by. He is often a guest expert on a great variety of TV programs and he was also the protagonist of the BBC’s and the Discovery Channel´s series The Human Animal, which appeared on TV for the first time in 1994. He still publishes books, of which the most recent one is called Child: How Children Think, Learn, and Grow in the Early Years, from 2010.

When Steven Pinker publishes a book, the critics take notice. A famed cognitive psychologist with chairs at Harvard University and the Masssachussetts Institute of Technology, Pinker gained renown in great part due to his books, many of which have become bestsellers. They deal with grand philosophical, sociological, and scientific themes with great erudition, but with an accessible manner. His most recent book, “The Better Angels of Our Nature: The Decline of Violence in History and its Causes”–a heavy tome of more than 700 pages—takes as its ambitious theme violence in humans and its apparent decline in modern society.

His approach combines scientific, historic, and social scholarships, and proposes that our actual period of relative peace stems largely from the post-Second World War era and the unimaginable violence it engendered. This notion of growing peace may seem incongruous to us in Mexico, where daily massacres appear in the papers—especially those as grisly as the Casino Royale incident this past Augsust 25^th –should give us serious pause. The ongoing civil war between opposing drug camps and the military has resulted in a continuous bloodbath—but Pinker has a telescopic scope and a far-ranging view which graphs far into the future, (as well as dealing mostly with first world countries in his book.)

This is not to understate how controversial his theory has been. Pinker draws his sociological extrapolation from the roots of the philosophies of the Enlightenment canon—he teeters between Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Descartes, Jefferson, Stuart Mill, and countless other venerable Founders of Modernity. John Gray, in Prospect Magazine, points out that the broad-ranging variety of Enlightenment thinkers—the very founders of, to quote Pinker, “Enlightenment humanism”—were not at all in philosophical accordance. Furthermore. they often advocated the use of violence if it could be justified to further the overall social good. Yet Pinker is nothing if not phenomenally erudite, and his tome is full of graphs and charts in support of his theory of declining levels of violence. An earlier book of Pinker’s, curiously enough, (the bestselling The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, 2002) posited the immutability of human nature and attacked the “blank slate,” theory of the primitive human mind. However, he seems to have revised his view of humanity somewhat, as this book balances somewhat precariously on a knife of evolutionary psychology, “between Darwinian rigeur and moral humanism,” as Grey points out.

Human beings, as every psychoanalyst knows, is torn constantly between his worst impulses—selfishness, anger, greed, and so on—and his best ones, those which Abraham Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature.” Pinker gives us a credible hope that one day these “better angels” will eventually triumph, and with it, the dream of leaving behind the world better than we found it. In speaking of this period of post-war peace, Pinker writes that, “as a result of this blessed state of affairs,two entire categories of war—the imperial war to acquire colonies, and the colonial war to keep them—no longer exist….To be sure, [the super-powers] occasionally fought each other’s smaller allies and stoked proxy wars among their client states.” Pinker takes into consideration that a great cause for the decline of violence is social pressure—that social contract which we are born into, and which forces us to abide by socially accepted mores and repress some of our more undesirable impulses. The real effect which he is talking about is expressed in the worldwide decline of urban crime statistics and social upheavals (for the most part, and again, in first world countries primarily.) There is also a great deal of ongoing scientific and academic research and constant innovation in a search to diminish violence in all aspects of daily life. Democracy, needless to say, has been a factor in this shift as well. Pinker is convinced that “the change in human affairs that has occurred is fundamental.”

Throughout history humanity has managed to instill within itself a more peaceable nature, in parallel with a somewhat sublimated affection for brutality and anarchy, albeit mostly at society’s fringes. However, it is still not totally clear whether our primitive human nature has been sufficiently “tamed,” or whether it has been merely subdued by social conventions whose yoke we grudgingly tolerate. In fact, if our surrounding social structure collapsed, it is dubious whether we would be able to maintain a semblance of order or of lawfulness for very long. There are endless examples in papers every day of savagery and brutality which arise out of the most seemingly common circumstances, whether they be opportunities for profit, destruction, a mass expression of discontent, or just a simple measure of impunity…

Finally, what Pinker achieves with “Better Angels” is to remind its readers of the enormous capacity for growth and improvement which humans inherently possess. A unique animal, it is pure potential at birth, and has developed a series of social contracts to further its cause and insure its survival and domination. Today we have the advanced concepts of “human rights” and “global conscience” to shield us from the threat of chaos. There is an ongoing fight to save the planet’s natural resources at the same time that there is a constant effort to decimate it and to suck its gifts to the core. For the liberal humanist, as Grey indicates, the purpose of science is often the closest way in which we may begin to approach a justification for the inherent violence in human nature—in fact, the gradations of the violent impulse may vary, but the principle and the origin remain strikingly similar. Besides, essentially—miraculously–as Pinker writes, “in many countries, you are less likely to die at the hands of another than at any time before in the history of humanity.” This fact is, at the time in which we are living, a comforting, important, and unforgettable fact.

In the October 1^st issue of The Economist I happened upon an article which dealt with the phenomenon of petty despotism in workplaces throughout the world. The article explored recent research on how it is that these so-called “Little Hitlers,” an insulting term coined after the Second World War, come to exercise their limited authority with such dictatorial abandon. This kind of phenomenon, as The Economist points out, plagues the world, and the workplace especially. But there had never before been a systematized scientific investigation into how and why it is that these little Hitlers abound.

Nathaniel Fast, of the University of Southern California, set up an experiment with 2 main variables: low status vs. high status, and low power vs. high power. Fast recruited 213 volunteers, who were each informed that they were a part of a study on virtual organizations. They were also told that they would interact with, but not meet, another volunteer who would also pass as a fictional fellow employee in a pretend consulting firm. The participants were divided into “idea producers” and “workers,” the latter being defined as a job that involved checking for spelling mistakes and other “menial” tasks. This was the part of the experiment where status differences were meted out into “high” and “low” statuses.

To combine the study of the interplay of different degrees of “power” with the participants’ “status” divisions, there was second twist. Participants were told that there would be a $50 dollar raffle at the end of the study. They were divided into “high-power” participants, who were told that they could determine the exact tasks which their “low-power” partners had to carry out in order to participate in the draw, and “low-power” participants, who were told the same thing, with the caveat that if the other person (the “high-power” participant) was not happy with the tasks that were set for him, he would have the option of removing the other person’s name from the raffle. These “high” and “low” power divisions were mixed in evenly amongst the “high” and “low” status participants.

To further complicate the scenario, participants were given a list of 10 tasks to choose from to ask of their counterparts (they had to choose three). The tasks ranged from fairly easy, like clapping their hands 50 times or telling a joke, to a little bit humiliating, such as barking like a dog or repeatedly having to say “I am filthy.” It was found that low power/low status interactions were extremely similar to the low power/high status interactions. These groups chose an average of 0.67 and 0.85 demeaning activities out of the three. In contrast, participants who were low in status but high in power—the classic “little Hitler” scenario—chose an average of 1.12 “deeply demeaning” tasks for their counterparts. Although not everyone in this group behaved inappropriately or cruelly, Fast’s overall results may suggest that a great deal of ordinary people who are faced with a certain set of “tempting” circumstances might fall into predictably aggressive patterns of behavior.

The revolutionary thing about this particular study is that there have been many studies never on how people react to differences in power, and about as many studies in varying attitudes to status; but never before has there been a controlled behavioral study on how it is that the two factors can interact. Surely (and hopefully) this is only the an initial step into a field that grows ever more complex, and has many possible implications where reforms could be instituted to improve the interaction, and by default, the productivity, in the workplace.

A short while ago I wrote about the OPERA experiment’s surprising results, in which the speed of light appeared to have been surpassed. These results were the culmination of a series of time trials which were carried out over a period of three years; particles were measured traveling from the CERN labs in Geneva to the Gran Sasso labs, under the mountains in Italy, over 700 km away. Their results indicated that neutrinos had traveled from the CERN’s labs to Gran Sasso at a rate which was recorded at 60 nanoseconds under the speed of light. According to Einstein’s theory of relativity, this is not possible. The scientific world was understandably flabbergasted.

Now, scientists are beginning to question CERN’s surprising results in a series of papers. Predictably, scientists all over the world began to work at their own experiments the moment the world heard about the OPERA results. CERN was careful about never actually stating that the laws of physics were being defied, nor the speed of light broken; rather they urged fellow scientists to work at confirming or invalidating their own experiment. Most papers, however, more than 30 of which have been published, did not directly challenge the results. There was one exception, though: one paper, posted on September 28 by theorist Carlo Contaldi of the Imperial College in London, which openly disagreed with the OPERA Experiment’s results.

Contaldi argues that what the OPERA Experiment did not take into account was Einstein’s general theory of relativity. According to these laws, the gravitational pulls at CERN, in Switzerland, and under the mountains, at Gran Sasso, are just a little bit different. Therefore, the laws of physics dictate that clocks in each region will move at slightly different speeds. Contaldi claims that the OPERA researchers’ calculations did not take this into account.

The CERN labs, because of their location in relation to the Earth’s center, feel a slightly stronger gravitational pull than those at Gran Sasso. Therefore, a clock in Geneva, where the neutrinos started off, would hypothetically run at a slower rate than a clock at their journey’s end. Contaldi says that this could account for the 60 nanoseconds which the sensors registered at Gran Sasso. As Toby Wiseman, another theoretical physicist at the Imperial College in London, asserts: “Whether [the clocks] have or haven’t been synchronized correctly is the crucial question.”

On the other hand, Dario Autiero, at the institute of Nuclear Physics in France, who coordinates much of the OPERA project, counters that Contaldi is not aware of OPERA’s calculations during the experiment. In addition, he assures the scientific community that the group is double-checking their procedure and results. According to the Journal Nature, Autiero has an ongoing email exchange with Contaldi which dozens of other physicists are following closely.

Contaldi is convinced that even CERN’s careful synchronization of the clocks, with the help of GPS, did not account for the “time dilation effect”, which he wrote could add up to tens of nanoseconds’ difference in accuracy. He claims that this could reduce the OPERA experiment’s statistical certainty from a standard deviation number of 6—considered extremely certain—down to a factor two or three, which would significantly decrease its experimental validity.

The Imperial College’s Wiseman, along with other physicists, are sure that the lack of information about the clocks’ accuracy is an important reason why so few papers clearly refuting the OPERA results have been published; once CERN publishes their latest investigations into their own methodology, he is sure, more papers will be written.

Here in Mexico, IFUNAM’s Saul Torres is certain that Einstein’s theory of relativity will not be torn down. He says: “Although the experiment has been taking measurements for three years, and compared to other experiments, there is a notable improvement in the precision of the measurements taken by various orders of magnitude…Einstein’s theory will not collapse; that is practically impossible.” All around the world, physicists are probably breathing a collective sigh of relief.

UPDATE: More recent information at Discovery News: http://news.discovery.com/space/faster-than-light-neutrino-theory-almost-certainly-wrong-111012.html

The mystery of Starbucks’ popularity has often been an object of speculation. The coffee is not that good, and the prices are high. Why then do Starbucks coffee shops keep mushrooming throughout the world? According to Tim Hartford, author of The Undercover Economist (Random House, 2005), it’s not only the familiar decoration, the pleasant lighting, the soft couches, or the friendly baristas. (Though they undoubtedly help—as many psychologists have noted, most of us respond to the Starbucks brand’s familarity.) As Hartford writes: it’s about “location, location, location.” There are dozens of similar coffee chains, all catering to well-off customers and offering just as many options. After all, a simple drip-coffee cup of of regular coffee costs Starbucks around 40 cents to produce. It is sold for anywhere from $1 to $2.45. It costs them around the same to make any cup of coffee, regardless of the complexity of its shaken-iced, flavor-shot glory. Yet the more complicated and larger the coffee is, the higher Starbucks’ profit margin will be. It is certainly a factor in Starbucks’ success that many of Starbucks’ larger confections are sold at a 150% markup.

The Starbucks brand’s popularity is also a sign of a clever reading of significant cultural change during the last two decades in the United States. Parallel with the internet revolution and the globalization of the economy, Silicon Valley was getting sophisticated and Europeanized. In Europe the café culture is centuries old, while in the United States it’s the diner or bar that have traditionally dominated the leisure scene. San Francisco and New York have always been considered the most cosmopolitan cities in the United States, and thus the Starbucks brand popularized in those cities and later, in 55 countries. In fact, Starbucks created a whole new subculture just with the world latte, which now signifies cosmopolitan sophistication in a discreet, subconscious sort of way.

There are many things about the famous coffee chain which people are not aware of. First of all, as Hartford points out, most people who purchase coffee at Starbucks are not aware that there are off-the-menu “short cappuccinos” and various other cheaper options. Starbucks just doesn’t offer these less expensive (and to many people, actually tastier), options unless a customer specifically asks for them. It claims this is due to a shortage of space on its boards, but that is is patently absurd. The real reason is that Starbucks doesn’t want people to buy the slightly cheaper options and jeopadize their huge markup for the more elaborate drinks. Starbucks’ niche, and its success, comes from catering to customers who are well-off enough to pay a little bit more for their coffee during their daily morning or evening commute and not think about it too hard.

The way in which they achieve this is by negotiating with landlords for prime real estate, such as (to use Hartford’s example) a much-frequented space in Waterloo Station in London, which gets some 74 million people in traffic each year. What the chain does is negotiate an expensive contract which is costly but which guarantees exclusivity and permanence, a fact which will outright forbid or at least scare off competitors. Thus did Starbucks become the only option for millions of people who really just want a simple cup of coffee. If people are willing to pay for it, as well as paying for dubious extras such as one more dollar for a “shaken” iced tea, then Starbucks will charge us for it. In fact, Starbucks prices are only a reflection of their keen knowledge of the market: they’ve refined prices to the point where everyone knows they’re paying too much for coffee, but it’s not expensive enough so they’ll bother to look for other options. It’s mass market capitalism at its finest. Value is created by the scarcity which Starbucks weaves into its contracts. It’s a good textbook example of how to achieve world domination though clever marketing and location finessing.

Also, it can’t hurt that caffeine is highly addictive and has become the most widely consumed drug in the world.

I’ve had the good fortune to interview number of remarkable people, but  perhaps the most peculiar one was Ray Kurzweil. Dr. Kurzweil agreed to meet me in his office at 11 in the morning. The first thing I noticed when I arrived was that his workspace is a veritable invention factory. Kurzweil, for many, is a prophet of what we will become when the first humanoids (the mixture of humans and technology) appear sometime during the first half of the 21st century. However, what Kurzweil really is is an inventor.

Among many other inventions, Kurzweil created the first omni-font optical character recognition software, which is a computer program capable of recognizing text written in any font. He also created a new form of music synthesizer which can perfectly replicate the sounds of real musical instruments. Later on, Kurzweil developed a computer system which recognized speech and commercialized it for popular use. These are only a few of his groundbreaking, practical inventions. Kurzweil has been  lauded for the originality of his mind—Forbes magazine once called him “the ultimate thinking machine.”

When I arrive at his office Kurzweil leads me into his private sanctuary, whereupon he proceeds to keep me waiting for two hours. He enters the room intermittently, sitting at his computer every 10 minutes and ingesting longevity vitamins as if they were popcorn. Once in a while he turns to me and stresses that the interview will happen at some point, but that he has 10 minutes for me, at the most.

At last the interview takes place. We start off with a rapport about our respective genealogies, finding a common point in ancestors (my grandfather and his father) who were both Viennese orchestra conductors. Then, for an hour and a half, he shares his vision of mankind’s future with me.

Kurzweil’s main argument is based on Moore’s Law, which states that the rate of innovation in computer technology grows exponentially, rather than linearly. Therefore, since so many fields—scientific, technological, and economic—depend on computer power, he maintains that this growth will translate into growth in many fields, such as nanotechnology and biotechnology. He calls this “The Law of Accelerating Returns.” This theory is in turns derided and admired by opposing camps in the futurist field.

Kurzweil predicts, among other things, that by 2050 people will be able to radically extend their lifespans through the use of “nanobots.” (Miniature robotics.) He is also convinced that by the year 2029, a computer will have passed the Turing test. Furthermore, he believes that artificial intelligence (A.I.) will have reached sentiency and develop and employ moral thinking. Kurzweil also forsees a time when humanoids will take over and erase the human-machine distinction. Thus, he argues, will humanity improve its overall quality of life and longevity. Kurzweil is hailed as a prophet for this concept of “technological singularity”—the anticipated point when exponential technological growth will surpass human intelligence and forever change us.

Dr. Kurzweil’s work may be controversial, but he has been at the forefront of science and technology for decades. He shows no sign of letting up on his quest. He has said that one of his goals is to bring back his dead father using DNA extracted from his grave and his own memories. I came away from the interview certain of one thing: Kurzweil’s  books and his  cutting-edge inventions are a testament to the remarkable powers of a truly original mind.

BY now most of us have heard of the shocking results produced only a few days ago at the Gran Sasso laboratory in Italy. For those of you who haven’t read about it, the Gran Sasso scientists are—albeit very cautiously—claiming that they’ve taken measurements of neutrinos travelling faster than the speed of light. The neutrinos, which started off in Geneva, Switzerland, at the CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) labs, appeared to arrive 60 nanoseconds before they would have if they’d been travelling at the speed of light. How so, you say? Einstein’s theory of relativity, the E=MC² every school child knows, states that nothing in the universe can travel faster than the speed of light. Relativity has become the foundation of modern physics. Now, 60 nanonseconds doesn’t sound like a lot, but if one takes into consideration the fact that the neutrinos’ whole, 730 km journey took less than 3 milliseconds, the number begins to take on some significance.

These measurements were detected by the most state-of-the-art equipment available: 150.000 bricks of photographic film interlaced with lead plates. Furthermore, those 60 nanoseconds amount to a factor of 6-sigma. “Sigma” is shorthand for standard deviation, or possible margin of error. The higher the sigma number, the more trustworthy a result is considered. Usually, at least a 5-sigma number (equivalent to a one in 1,744,278 chance that the result is a fluke) is required to lay claim to a successful result in the scientific arena. A 6-sigma result—equivalent to a one in 506,797,346 chance—is almost ironclad. If this were any other kind of particle physics result, celebrations would be in order. As it is, though, it defies the most universally acknowledged constant in modern physics, and it is a serious challenge to all of its foundations.

In light of these issues, the CERN scientists themselves are asking other researchers to try to replicate their results. As a CERN spokesman said the other day, “The feeling that most people have is this can’t be right, this can’t be real.” Chicago’s Fermilab, among others, are already working on their own experiments. If they are indeed verified, “it could mark the biggest discovery in physics in the past half century,” as Adrian Cho, from Wired magazine, said. If it isn’t, the worldwide uproar will have attested to the best part about the scientific method: when people in the same field combine their brains, their time, and labs in a collective effort which trusts in verifiability before sensation, in the endless replication of experiments, in a global application of the same scientific method to produce hard data or shatter the CERN results to bits. Whatever happens, whether relativity is toppled or upheld, science—and humanity—will surely have won.

Do you remember the movie “Seven years in Tibet”, based on a homonymous book that recounts the experiences of Heinrich Harrer in Asia in Asia from 1944 to 1951? The film references a Buddhist temple that took a long time to build since the place was infested by rats and cockroaches. Someone might ask himself or herself: why? Was there not poison available to get rid of the plague? Is it so hard to crush cockroaches? We must consider that for Tibetan Buddhism harming a living being implies risking inflicting harm towards a reincarnation of another human being. Indeed, according to this belief when laying down rattraps you could be attempting against the reincarnation of your ancestors.

For many people the idea of reincarnation could make no sense and reincarnating as an animal could result hilarious. Have you asked yourself what other cultures must think of our religious beliefs? What would they think if we told them that a talisman, a medallion with a saint or a hamse—the hand of Fatima—can protect us from the ‘evil eye’? They might laugh or look at us condescendingly, just like an adult sees a small child who doesn’t want to fall asleep until they see Santa Claus.

Questioning religious dogma is dangerous. Those who doubt supernatural beliefs—the skeptics—are usually accused of attempting against “good”. But those that present this type of accusations pretend to ignore that they themselves are skeptical towards the religious beliefs of others; and what is more, some fundamentalists are willing to resort to violence so they can impose their beliefs over others, under the argument that they know “the truth” and everyone else is mistaken. Which is why today, dear reader, I would like to prove to you that you are a skeptic as well, that you doubt sacred dogma, even if—first and foremost—you are a vehement religious person. Ask yourself the following:

Those who practice astrology believe that having Saturn in their astral chart represents a bad omen for their life. Do you care about the relationship between Saturn and your birth date?

A habitual practice in Santeria is sacrificing chickens or goats as offerings to supernatural powers for wish fulfillment. Do you think it works?

Scientologists affirm that every human being hosts a soul that came from another planet, called “thetan”. What is your opinion?

The Aztecs considered an honor to be cut through the chest in order to offer their heart to a feathered serpent god. Would you like to be “recognized” in such a way?

Millions of Hindus pray to phallic statues of the god Shiva. Do you think your life would be better if you did it as well?

Some Muslim fundamentalists are taught that if they make themselves explode within a synagogue during a religious ceremony, they will become martyrs and will immediately go to paradise where beautiful virgins await them. Does this make sense to you?

Judaism teaches that lighting a match or a car during the Sabbath goes against God’s commandments and that a married woman should not shake the hand of a man who doesn’t belong to her family. What is your opinion on this?

One of the fundamental dogmas of the Catholic Church is that the wine and communal wafers become the body and blood of Christ during the consecration. Do you think that happens?

Millions of Pentecostal Christians affirm that the Holy Spirit makes them ‘speak in tongues’ spontaneously without prior knowledge of said ‘languages’. Do you think this is possible?

The Book of Mormon—the holy book of the Church of Latter Day Saints—affirms that Jesus came to America after his resurrection. Do you think this is a historical fact?

Aha! I could’ve guessed it, surely you are as incredulous as I am regarding everything I just mentioned, or at least towards dogmas foreign to your own religion.

You are a skeptic, you see. Any supernatural belief system that one adopts demands us assuming that certain dogmas are “the truth”. If one accepts such a thing, then all other forms of dogma being true are cancelled—e.g. if one believes that they will go to paradise or hell upon death; reincarnation is not a possibility—and in this sense we are skeptics since we doubt those things that others accept as “truth”.

The reason for this is very simple: every religion aims to be a “monopoly” of faith and towards that effect it must impose entrance barriers upon the competition. Feeling ‘special’ is a biological necessity that will always persist. Everyone has the right to believe what they want and we should all respect everyone’s religious ideas, even when the point is to not believe. Which is why, before adopting a religion or continuing in one consider this principle: that our religious beliefs do not affect the physical integrity nor the freedom of others.

It is encouraging to notice that almost every one of us doubt religion, at least the religion of others.

How good or bad is excess confidence? In May 1997 Garry Kasparov—the best chess player in the world—was beat by IBM’s Deep Blue chess computer. For many this date marks a watershed on the certainty of human superiority over machines, or like Wired magazine described, “(since that day) the human race has an inferiority complex…and humanity’s role in the order of things was modified”.


Kasparov had defeated a previous version of IBM’s computer with ease, and so he felt confident to do it again: he was wrong. At the end Kasparov commented that his mistake was due to his success, since he was overconfident over his accumulated successes and never realized that every game demands new and reconsidered strategies.


Confidence on success helps us assume risk and reduce the stress that it entails. However, there are usually moments in which self-confidence provokes the relaxation of one’s intellect, a decrease in perseverance, being less inquisitive and winging it. The natural consequence of decision-making in this scenario is making mistakes. ‘Don’t believe everything you think’ is always a good reminder.

Upon studying overconfidence social scientists came up with the term “calibrated”, which pretends to measure the difference between real abilities and supposed ones. Studies conclude that we are badly calibrated in general: we think we are better than what we really are for certain activities, with a priority on those that we need for work. The US army, for example, held a study for which it first asked a group of soldiers at Fort Benning to predict their outcome on the shooting range. The soldiers predicted that they would hit their target 75% more times than they actually did.

How do we generate excess confidence? When we achieve what we want we confirm the certainty of our actions or beliefs. Before observing the circumstances that favored success we prefer to simply attribute that “victory” to our own capacities. This is how a circle of constant reassurance is generated. But when the facts prove otherwise, we break the circle and are inclined to attribute failure or causes that escape our control and willpower –e.g. destiny or bad luck—.

Also, if we make a mistake during a crucial moment—in a championship game or a decisive battle—every preceding success is seen as a mere ‘pyrrhic victory’. The problem for leaders and experts is that their work consists in constantly making decisions in peak moments and any mistake carries dire consequences.

Like best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell pointed out during the third edition of the La Ciudad de las Ideas Festival, we all make mistakes, but not all mistakes have the same consequences and that depends in good measure on the position of power or authority that one has. A person that goes through a red light without noticing could cause a more or less bad accident, a flight controller incapable of giving warning upon impending danger could provoke a tragedy, but a president who declares war under the premise of controlling the opposition in a few weeks—oblivious to the enemy’s territory and without considering their motivations—will make thousands meet an early death.

According to Gladwell, during the great depression in the 1920′s and during the financial crisis that we are going through right now the problem was the overconfidence by executives and experts from the large financial institutions. While the great international banks went into crisis their CEO’s were taking time off to play golf, delaying important decision-making, blindly supposing that they could control adversity. In this regard, I must say that although I coincide with Gladwell in that haughtiness is an evil in any decision-making scenario, there seems to be no empirical evidence that sustains a correlation between overconfidence and the financial crisis.

And so, should we be perfectly calibrated? Not necessarily, during the research at Fort Benning, the only five shooters who were right on their prediction—those who were “calibrated well”—were the five worst ones. Being overconfident is not only a part of human nature, but recommendable if and when one can achieve what psychologists call the optimum point of illusion: the point where an excess of confidence does not suppose a relaxation of our efforts to achieving objectives. In this sense Gladwell suggests having a bit of overconfidence when in the presence of the family of our mate.

Like a saying attributed to Kasparov says: “A small excess of confidence is better than the opposite. If one is wrong, it’s because of lack of the necessary risks to become an innovator.” But let’s not forget the word ‘small’.

Once upon a time there was a place where citizens were told that they were partners-owners of a big oil company but they never received their utilities and were not allowed to sell their shares… if necessary, however, they would be asked to “increase their capital” in the form of taxes.

A place where children grew up thinking that “obey” was another generic term for “child”.

A place where in the first eighteen months of a child’s life its parents dedicated themselves to teach them how to walk, explore and speak; and the next eighteen years trying to make the child be still, quiet and obedient.

A place where the majority of citizens did not mind “victory or defeat” as much as “being the winner.”

A place where the problem with being punctual was that only whoever was punctual appreciated it… everyone else arrived after him.

A place where 100% of successful people considered that 99% of their peers achieved success by mere luck or by cheating.

A place where original and good things where produced: the bad side was that the good things weren’t original and the original things weren’t good.

A place where school image had the worst reputation.

A place where there was more freedom of expression than of thought.

An insecure place whose citizens suffered because of crime… but if they didn’t pay their taxes they would end up in prison.

A place where extending long weekends was a priority for congress…up to the point of reforming a law to guarantee official “long weekend vacations”.

A place where politicians dressed up as citizens: they were ashamed of saying that they were really politicians.

A place with a “free” alimentary system…which is why no one gave it value.

A place where the non-performing loan portfolios of the private banking system was subsidized with taxpayer money.

A place where citizens were worried about spending less instead of being productive and efficient.

A place where circumstances guaranteed that whoever started off with nothing would remain the same for their lifetime.

A place where every four years there was the “dream” of a FIFA championship, but the only first place its citizens got was in child obesity.

A place where the past was celebrated, not the future.

A place where nobody had to worry about the elderly older than eighty years old…it wasn’t necessary since life expectancy didn’t reach that age.

A place where children grew up thinking “you turned out just like your father” was bad.

A place in which “merit” had nothing to do with results, but with relationships.

A place where politicians did not lie, they were honest about their thoughts: the problem was that they constantly changed their minds.

A place where corrupt policemen were punished not by being sent to jail, but by being fired. This is how they could dedicate their full time towards criminal activities.

A place where democracy was based on collective wisdom product of individual disinformation.

A place whose citizens believed that Asians converted crisis into opportunity: so to be original they decided to convert opportunity into crisis.

A place where the problems that made citizens lose sleep came from two sources: personal disgrace and the success of their neighbors.

A place where there was only two ways of being indifferent towards violence: playing dumb being dumb.

A place where—despite the laws of physics—it was apparently possible to change the past (of the nation)…every six years some “historian” bureaucrat made sure to prove it.

A place whose geniuses were easy to recognize: suffice to wait for the useless to conspire against him/her and/or seeing him/her being supported by another country.

A place whose citizens knew that bureaucracy was overpaid… but were content thinking: “Those were the cards we were dealt”.

A place whose mediums abandoned the business, when rumor spread that superstition was bad luck.

A place where Stephen Grover Cleveland’s maxim: “Though the people support the government, the government should not support the people” ruled.

A place where politicians spent so much time “pre-occupying” themselves with citizen problems—manifested in their discourses, in their meetings and in partisan documents—that they left little time to actually “occupy” themselves upon solving these problems.

A place full of opportunities; any adolescent could find an occupation around the corner…the requisite—unfortunately—was pulling the trigger.

A place where whoever did not attain the greatness of success could always recur to a great public relations company to convince the world of the contrary.

A place where citizens were taught to be proud of their constitution “the most advanced of its time… the one that recognized the greatest number of social rights”—they were told—but little was done to make everyone obey the law.

It was a place where only you, the reader, could make a difference.