Incentive systems - they're challenging to design!

I wrote a blog post a while back about incentive systems, and how they're gamed. I thought of a few more examples. Last summer, trying to get the kids to help out with pulling weeds in the yard, I told them that they have to pull a certain amount (I think it was around 50), and then they'd be done. The only rule was that they needed to have the root, they couldn't just pull the green part.

What happened? Well, you never saw little micro-weeds smaller than the ones my kids pulled up. They were more like sprouts than real weeds.

It made me think of this quote, by Austrian economist F.A. Hayek:

The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.

Kids lives have become more and more constrained

From one point of view, kids lives are better. They have so many more toys! They have an amazing amount of electronic stimulation! Their parents are constantly driving them here and there for sports, arts, and other enrichment activities!

But I look at many kids lives, and I'm saddened. What they do not have is so important. Here's some of the things that I had, growing up in the 1970's, that most kids (including mine) do not have:
The chance to knock on a neighbors door, to ask a child out to play, and have a 50/50 chance that they will be successful
The ability to roam freely in open areas with friends, doing things like making cattails swords. Just messing about in the outdoors, having fun.

In our neighborhood (and from what I hear from friends, most neighborhoods are like this), there are never any kids playing on the street. And I mean never. The chances that while walking around, you'll see any activity whatsoever except for an occasional dog-walker are almost nil.

When I was growing up, we frequently had large, kid-organized games of kickball and other games happening, with 6 to 10 kids.  My kids have literally never experienced any kid-organized activity like this. Sure, they're been to organized sports activities like soccer, where somebody tells them where to go, what to do, how to play, etc. But that's a 100% different experience, and much inferior to a group of kids working it out themselves, communicating and negotiating with their peers, and having fun on their own initiative.

I recommend the book Free-Range Kids, How to Raise Safe, Self-Reliant Children (Without Going Nuts with Worry) as a good overview of the problem. I can't say I have any particular solutions myself.

I thought I wasn't athletic, until I tried Pickleball!

I've been looking for a sport recently, and decided to try badminton, since I like racquet sports (though I never got really into tennis). It turns out there's a badminton center nearby, and they offered drop-in classes, so I took one after the first of the year. It turned out pretty well, I enjoyed it, and the instructor was good.

But over the weekend, a friend of mine had gone to the local community center, where they have drop-in pickleball, and told me I should try that. I went, and people were friendly and welcoming, teaching me the ropes and including me in games right away. I'm fairly coordinated, so I was able to play at a basic level right away. I had a total blast! Now I'm in love with it.

The funny thing is, I've tried pickleball a few times already, but didn't stick with it. I had heard about pickleball years ago, and went to a drop-in pickleball session at the Mercer Island community center. It was fine, but the level of play was fairly high, and people weren't all that welcoming to a new player. Which is fine, they were there to play, and not necessarily teach newbies. I should have persisted, but I didn't. Then a few years ago, a friend of mine who's really into pickleball took me to an outdoor court, showed me the ropes, and we played a bit. And still — I didn't pursue it anymore. There was still the "what next?" question — how to actually play with people (besides my friend, who lives a distance away).

Why is it that this time, I've really gotten into it? A couple reasons, really. One is that once I got up the courage to actually go, the players at the community center drop-in pickleball session were really friendly and made it easy for me to start up. Even though it took some guts to walk up to a bunch of strangers and essentially say, "please teach me pickleball", it was very much rewarded. Also, I've really been longing for a physical activity that involves winning and loosing — it just makes it so much more interesting than activities like swimming.  Also, the community center is really close by, and lots of people go for the drop-in pickleball, so there's plenty of people to play with.

Kids books nowadays don't reflect their lives (because playdates are boring)

A while back my son Peter was reading the book There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed Fly Guy. It's a fun beginning chapter book about a boy with a pet fly.

Fly Guy is riding his bike, alone, to his grandmother's house for an overnight stay

What struck me most is that in the book, the main character rides his bike, alone, with a backpack and with his pet fly on his shoulder, to visit his grandmother's house for an overnight stay. My immediate thought was—that would so never happen nowadays. Kids today are almost never allowed out of the house on their own. Much less on a bike, with a backpack, headed for an overnight stay.

The popular kids books nowadays (the Harry Potter series, the Rick Riordan books) do not talk about kids lives, as they're actually lived in the present day US. The kids in the books, much more so than in previous eras, live in a world of adventure and independence that's very, very far removed from their real lives. You wouldn't read in a children's book about kids going on a playdate, or being driven to soccer practice, because it's boring and there's no story, as the kids have no ability to make decisions.

I think kids today are missing out on so much, because their lives are so constrained and controlled. I'll be writing a few more blog posts on this topic soon.

The review system in Amazon is routinely hacked

I wrote a book recently called SQL Practice Problems: 57 beginning, intermediate, and advanced challenges for you to solve using a "learn-by-doing" approach, and published it on Amazon. It hasn't been a best-seller, but it was fun to write, and I think I did a good job of gradually increasing the difficulty of the problems, and introducing the most common problem that come up in database work.

A few weeks ago, when I looked up the general keyword "SQL" on Amazon.com, I was amazed to find that the book that's listed first is a thrown-together compilation of text copied from various websites (for instance, a website detailing ANSI SQL standards). The entire books is like that, completely useless garbage for anyone trying to learn SQL, and obviously written by someone who doesn't know anything at all about the topic, as a quick money-maker.

This terrible book comes up first on Amazon when you search for SQL

How the heck does this book regularly and consistently, every time I've looked, come up first when searching for books on SQL on Amazon?

I'll tell you why. Amazon has made positive reviews by verified buyers into either the most important factor, or one of the most important factors in ranking books. However, all of the positive reviews on this book are all paid for! How do I know this? Because I know the subject matter backwards and forwards, and I know how poor the quality of this book really is. I'd bet good money that all the five star reviews are paid for. Here's one that's obviously fake:

This book is simply amazing. I think many of the other reviewers have done a great job evaluating it. I just want to share my own experience because I like the book so much. I am not a tech savvy but I've taken a position that requires me to know how to run SQL queries. Therefore, I had no prior knowledge of SQL before buying this book. I've been able to go through the book, step by step, and understanding it. So if you are simply looking for how to get data out of a SQL Server like I am, this is the perfect book for you.

But here's one that's not so obvious. Had I not known better, I would have thought this was a real review:

I work with Microsoft SQL Server daily. I have literally read dozens of SQL books since my college days. Although I am very proficient in SQL now, I am constantly looking for the easiest way to teach the people I work with who have zero SQL experience. The most common problem with every book I have read is how they overcomplicated simple concepts and without simple examples. This book is truly a simple and easy to understand beginners guide. The best part about this book is the code examples it provided. They are real problems that you could face in your daily SQL operations. If you are a moderate experienced SQL user, you will find this book makes a great pocket reference.

Some of the obviously paid-for reviews are not even five star reviews! There are 72 five star reviews, and 31 four star reviews. I assume that if a book has too many five star reviews as compared to four star reviews, that's a red flag to the system. There's currently 72 five star reviews, and 31 four star reviews. I'm assuming that all of them are paid for.

Here's an interesting tidbit - there's only 1 three star review. And it seems like a real, not paid-for review. When you look up the reviewer, you notice a few things. Number 1, the reviewer actually shows their reviews. Many (but not all) of the reviewers who doing reviews for payment do not show their reviews. There must be some kind of setting in Amazon that allows you to hide reviews. Number 2, some of the other reviews that this reviewer has posted are for physical items, instead of Kindle books. The fake reviewers have posted mainly reviews for Kindle books.

I don't envy Amazon, having to come up with a system to weed out the real reviews from the fake, paid ones. It's a very difficult problem. But the honest truth is they're doing an awful job, based on the fact that in the area in which I'm most knowledgeable, the book that ranks highest has almost nothing but fake positive reviews and is a truly terrible book.

I've counted on Amazon reviews for years to give accurate information, and now I only do that with big caveats, and with a skeptical eye. I look at the negative reviews much more closely than the positive reviews.

What could Amazon do? I think for one, they need to pay more attention to the problem of fake reviews. Fake reviews are causing all reviews to become less valuable, and that's a big problem. It's a tricky problem because inevitably they will flag some real reviews as fake, and piss people off, and those people will complain mightily. But it's something they need to do, because as there are more fake reviews out there, the whole review system becomes much less valuable.

What to do for a broken toe? It depends who you ask...

My son sprained or broke his toe yesterday. It was painful, and swollen, and is a little discolored now.

He's not a complainer, so when he limped for hours, I looked online to see what the best options were. And of course, the course of action recommended is very heavily dependent on what type of site it is.

American websites—at least those run by professional organizations—will always recommend that you go immediately to a doctor. They'll say something like this:

If you think you have a fracture, it is important to see your doctor as soon as possible. A fracture that is not treated can lead to chronic foot pain and arthritis and affect your ability to walk.

(The above is a direct quote from the website of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons)

However, the NHS website (National Health Service, the government run health care service from the United Kingdom) specifically says that most broken toes can be treated at home, unless there's complications.

I'm not at all in favor of government run health care. However, these two different approaches are a really good example of how a difference in self-interest leads to a difference in opinion. The American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons wants everyone to run to an orthopedic surgeon if they suspect there may be a sprain or a break because it's great for their bottom line.

But an organization like the UK National Health Service is trying to limit the number of people that go to the doctors office. And writing up webpages that advocate reasonable self-care is a good way to do that.

It's just like the saying "don't ask a barber if you need a haircut". I remember chatting with my hair-stylist, when getting my hair colored around the year 2007 or 2008, at the start of the recession, and asking her if her business had gone down at all, since many people were short of money. She immediately replied, very definitively, "Oh no, women always continue to get their hair done, because it's important to their self-esteem, and they cut back on everything else first". I immediately thought to myself—her self-interest is definitely coloring her opinion, and this is her view of what the world should be like. It didn't work—I color my hair myself now. It's much faster, and of course cheaper.

Meeting someone with a truly different background

We had dinner yesterday with the mother of a friend of ours, I'll call her Amy. Amy is from East Africa, and is maybe 5 or 10 years older than I am. It's been a very long time since I've spoken with someone at length who has had a really distinct background from mine, and it was a pleasure to spend time with her. She told some very interesting stories about her life in Africa, and her move about 7 years ago to Sweden, as a refugee.

First of all - she grew up in an agricultural village. She had to go to the river daily for water, carrying the water on her head in a clay jar. If she met a man, she had to bow to him (I didn't quite get how that could happen without the jar falling down, but apparently it's possible). She also had to wait until she could no longer hear the man's footsteps before she could start walking again.

Men in general were treated like kings, and acted like them. She had to ask her husband, who was known as a kindly man, for permission to go anywhere, including the market. She was extremely lucky in that she got an education, almost no girls her age did. Because she had three daughters, who were only "half children" (compared to sons), she had to always be concerned about being replaced with another wife. She was taught to kneel or curtsy to teachers or elders, or to greet guests.

Growing up in her village, animals were a constant danger. Five of her relatives were killed by animals. She has a hatred of wild animals to this day, especially snakes, which she hates particularly. A spitting cobra snake once spit in her eye and blinded her, but luckily with special herbal preparations she avoided being blinded permanently, which is a grave danger with spitting cobras. Amy loved her grandmother, and would walk a lonely path to her hut, always carrying a stick and rocks in case there were animals. She remembers with fondness evenings around  the campfire, where elders would tell stories, usually instructional stories involving animals, those were especially good times.

Moving to Sweden in her late 40's or early 50's was a massive adjustment in everything imaginable. When I asked what Sweden was like, the first word she said was "lonely". It was very difficult to adjust and to learn Swedish. There's much less social life for her there. She said it was like starting again in life.

Goodwill vs Value Village - which is better?

Ever since I've shopped for my own clothes, I've gone to thrift stores. I like them better than regular retail because there's so much more variety, there's always the "treasure hunt" aspect of it, and, of course, the prices are so much cheaper than standard retail.

Around here, in the Seattle area, there's 2 main chains of thrift stores, one for-profit (Value Village), and the other a nonprofit, Goodwill. I've been to both, a lot, and over the years have developed a clear favorite, which is Value Village. I think Value Village is run much more efficiently, and with the customer in mind.

For instance, I was looking at kitchen knives recently. At Goodwill, they were all jumbled together into a bin, with occasionally a piece of opaque masking tape over the sharp edge. It was very dangerous, because the masking tape came off sometimes, so you had to be extremely careful if you didn't want to get your fingers sliced. Also, you couldn't see the knife edge, to see whether it was straight or serrated, since it was covered with masking tape.

At Value Village, on the other hand, they've thought about it, and have a good solution. The knives have transparent, strong packing tape on their sharp edges, and on the side opposite the handle, there's a reinforced hole so it can go onto one of those straight hooks that store displays have. So instead of everything being tossed together into a bin, it's hung up, and customers can easily look through them.

You see this same type of quality difference everywhere when comparing Value Village and Goodwill. In Value Village, if a garment is hung in the Women's jeans, size 6 section, it will definitely be Women's jeans, size 6. In Goodwill, at least 25% will be incorrectly sorted.

Why is this? I've seen this at a lot of nonprofits. They're very invested in "doing good", and have signs everywhere about the people they're helping. Which I applaud. But that doesn't excuse them from doing a good job at the main purpose of the store—selling well-priced merchandise, organized properly, in a well-run store.

Value Village does a much better job, even though they start with significant disadvantages. For one, they pay taxes. They also actually pay for the items that are donated to them (via a scheme where they give credit to a local nonprofit for everything donated to them, even if it goes directly to them), as opposed to Goodwill, which gets straight donations. Also, there are many people who will only donate to Goodwill, specifically because they're a nonprofit.

Daily weigh-ins—they really work for getting weight off, and especially keeping it off

Back in 2010 I wrote a a post on this topic, called, Daily weigh-ins—they really work!.  I've been weighing myself daily now since then, and maintained my weight (more or less). I've also seen friends and relatives lose weight and gain the weight back again multiple times, doing various diet programs and detox programs. Everyone that's I know who's done these diet programs (weight watchers or other programs) has NOT weighed themselves daily. As a matter of fact, the diet programs my friends and relatives have been on actually instruct you to NOT weigh yourself daily, and only weigh yourself at the meetings.

My weight chart

I think avoiding a daily weigh-in is rotten idea if you have weight issues. Weighing yourself daily is the most powerful things you can do in order to maintain or lose weight. The companies that sell weight loss programs and devices would love to be the gatekeeper, and have you rely on them for help with your weight. But the most powerful, long-term answer to weight loss and maintenance is to control your weight yourself. You can do this in your home, in about 5 seconds a day, by stepping on the scale and making an x mark on a graph. When you notice that your weight is up a pound or two after an indulgent meal the evening before, that's a very powerful, critical nudge to eat more lightly the next day.

Will your weight fluctuate on a daily basis? Sure it will. It needn't bother you once you've gotten used to it, and realize that usually these fluctuations have a cause and can be accounted for.

What about the fat vs. muscle argument? Some people say that you shouldn't weigh yourself daily because you may get discouraged as the scale goes up, when you're actually gaining muscle instead of fat. I say that's baloney. Compared to the number of people that are overweight because they're too fat, the number that are overweight because they're muscular is tiny. Unless you know for sure you're one of them, this is not a reason to not step on the scale daily.

I did a little research online, to see what people are saying nowadays about weighing yourself daily to control your weight.

What did I find? When I searched for my exact old blog post title, the first link that comes up on Google was this self-serving post, 5 Reasons to Stop Weighing Yourself Everyday, put out by a company that sells very expensive body composition analysis machines, designed to be used "by professionals only". They're so expensive that there's not even a price, you have to call them for a quote. So they definitely don't want you to use something as cheap, easy, and accessible as a scale, because that would be bad for their business.

Next on the Google search results list was this post by Jillian Michaels, entitled "MYTH: WEIGHING YOURSELF DAILY WILL HELP YOU STAY ON TRACK". It's another story designed to sell her products—a meal plan and exercise app. She basically says that because for many people weighing themselves is a source of stress, and it should only happen once a week.

There are a few more links that are more even-handed, and do recommend weighing yourself daily. But the fact remains that the links that got highest up in the rankings are those that presumably spent the money on SEO, and as a consequence are giving out information that is bad advice for most people.

My 2 best tips for getting kids to do their chores

Okay, I know—most of the time, it's faster to clean and do other chores yourself. But there has to be a tipping point sometime, an age where the energy expended in actually getting the kids to do chores is less than the energy expended to do them yourself.

I think we've reached that tipping point, for some chores, with my kids—at least Kenny, my 13 year old. My younger son Peter (age 9) still daydreams quite a bit. Still, it's important for kids to do chores, to learn to do practical things and to contribute to the running of the household.

However, the arguing over whose turn it is to do the chore is something I want to avoid. One way we've made the assigning of chores easier is by the extremely simple rule that determines whose day it is. There's no chore chart, or labeled calendar. If it's an even date, it's Peter's turn. If it's an odd date, it's Kenny's turn. That very simple device avoids 95 percent of the arguing over whose turn it is. And that's the way my parents ran the dish-washing routine when my brother Tom and I did the dishes—the same odd/even thing.

Why does this only avoid 95% of the argument, and not 100%? That's because of the fact that there are more odd dates than even dates (some months having 31 days, and always starting with a 1). So when Kenny has 2 days in a row to do, there will be complaints. But he's older anyway, so this will be the way it is. With Peter I'll help out, to keep him on track. Kenny can mostly do it on his own.

The other tip that helps with the mess is that before they have screen time, there's certain things that need to be done (school things put away, room cleaned, bed made, etc). I have a checklist that they're supposed to go through before turning on their Ipads. It works remarkably well, but only if I'm diligent about actually checking whether they did the things on their list or not.

The happiness of little fixes

The little fixes I'm talking about are the little physical things that don't work in your life. These are things that bug you frequently, but aren't necessarily serious enough for you to spend a lot of time and money on.

For instance, in the cabinet above my oven, I had no good place to store the lid for a casserole dish. I would always just prop it up on the side, trying to get the angle right so that it wouldn't slide down. But it usually would slide down, and prevent me from easily taking out my frequently used casserole dish. 

So recently I fixed it. It's a really hacky fix, but it works great. I just taped a large plastic straw from McDonald's down at about the right spot, so the lid couldn't slide. It took about 5 minutes, once I decided to do it, and almost all of that was finding the straw. But it works great now, I can get things in and out much more easily.

Another fix was sewing up my plastic laundry basket, which was tearing in a high-stress spot. There's nothing special about this laundry basket, but it's slimmer and lighter than the ones sold nowadays, so I wanted to keep it. I had fun with this, drilling holes in the plastic and sewing it up with a piece of plastic coated wire. The fix has lasted now at least 5 years or so, with no further tearing.

Making fixes like this is a good mood builder, for a couple reasons:

• I've solved a problem that persistently bugged me
• My environment now suits me better
• When I later see these little fixes, I get a little micro burst of competency

Try it out! Find something small in your home that bugs you, and fix it. You'll love it!

A lesson on obesity from War and Peace

I decided a few months ago that I should be a little more ambitious with my reading, and finally read War and Peace by Tolstoy. I had picked it up multiple times over the years, but just couldn't get into it. This time, it was enjoyable once I got into the story, and started getting interested in the characters. I didn't have a hard time finishing it.

But anyway, in War and Peace I came across a quote that really illustrates an essential component of obesity. It's in a scene where the Russian army is chasing Napoleon's army back across Russia, in the dead of winter, with very little warm clothing and food. Both soldiers and prisoners of war are dying of cold and starvation on all sides. A group of soldiers is lounging around a campfire in the evening, commenting on the situation, and one soldier nicknamed Crow says,

"If a man’s sleek and fat he just grows thin, but for a thin man, it’s death."

The point is that over the entire history of humankind, this is exactly what has happened. Whenever there was a crop failure or a shortage of food for any reason, the fat got thin (and survived), but the thin died.

What does this mean? It means over the millennia, the people who survived to pass on their genes are the ones who ate what they could when there was a surplus of food, and developed a little extra layer of fat. Those genes that encourage us to eat more, to stuff ourselves when there's yummy food available, to get hungry easily—these are the genes that stuck around, because the people carrying them survived famines and food shortages.

Now, we have the opposite of food scarcity. We have a tremendous abundance of food, engineered to be as delicious as possible, relatively inexpensive, and available anytime, anywhere. So, our environment has changed tremendously.

Our genes haven't changed, though. They're still screaming at us, via our senses and desires, to eat, and eat more, before the next famine comes.

For whatever reason, this doesn't come up much in the whole discussion about obesity. It's not a problem of evil corporations that develop addictive food, and it's not a massive lack of willpower. It's the fact that while our environment has changed to become much richer in calories, our genetic heritage says, "eat now, so that you don't die when food is scarce".