Q&A: Why do people like order?

From Day Lesson: Guided Decisions

Reader Windless: “”Customization” is the manipulation of people. Being “customized” should make you feel a little uncomfortable.” How can we tell which “customization” we don’t need to worry about too much, and which “customization” we need to “be customized”, and where are the boundaries?

Wiksteel replied -

People generally choose to accept “defaults” customized by merchants or organizations because they are not sensitive enough to know that there might be something wrong with them; many people refuse to be customized out of a desire to defend their right to control. Both are bad.

*The key to accepting customization is how much you care about it, and how much you are different from the average person. *

If you’re eating at a restaurant and the waiter says order a prix fixe! If you just want a full meal and don’t care what the experience has to be for this meal, then I suggest just listening to the waiter. What he recommends may not be the best or the most suitable for you, but it certainly won’t be bad. And you’ll have to put in some work that you don’t really want to put in to avoid ordering something bad.

But if you care about this, you have to understand one thing: the defaults, even if they are full of good intentions, are only the best options for the “average person”, the “average person”. But the reality is that no one is average, and everyone has their own unique needs and habits.

When you buy a new TV, the manufacturer, perhaps with the best of intentions, has put a few of the channels and apps that people use the most on the front page. If you watch a lot of TV, the first thing you should do is delete the channels you don’t use and put the apps you use most on the home page. You reap the benefits of smoothness and efficiency later.

It doesn’t have to be about fighting against the merchants, it’s about having your own customization just because “I” am different.

From DayLessons: Scratching an Itch for Action

Reader: Mr. Wan, why do human beings like “order” so strongly? Is this preference preserved because the power of order brings a strong survival advantage as humans survive and reproduce? Is there any strong argument or explanation for this in modern evolutionary psychology or brain neuroscience?

Wei Wei Gang replies -

You are quite right that the human preference for order is indeed an evolutionary advantage.

Let’s be clear about what ‘order’ is. A group of people lined up, a pile of things neatly arranged, a piece of music with a precise rhythm, a poem that rhymes, these are all order. In mathematical terms, these are all ‘symmetries’ of some kind: that is, there is a property of invariance along a certain dimension. The left side of your face looks like this, and the right side of your face looks like this; this is invariance, which is symmetry, which is order.

Why do we like symmetry [1]? The most basic reason is because symmetry creates familiarity. Familiarity makes it easy to remember, it makes it predictable, it reduces cognitive stress. Sentences that rhyme are easy to memorize, songs that have a rhythm are easy to sing along with, things that are neatly arranged are easy to manage, and orderly teams give you a sense of control. Even when you watch a tandem diving competition, you expect both athletes to move in absolute synchronization.

Anyone who has children at home knows that children prefer to watch familiar TV programs. Often, they watch a movie over and over again. This is because everything in the world is new to a child, and he needs to hold on to a little bit of the familiar in order to feel warm and controlled.

Further, symmetry represents health in terms of gathering food and choosing a partner. Defects can occur randomly in any part of the body, and things with defects are usually asymmetrical. You gather an apple, you don’t want it to be an oddly shaped apple. But you can’t say that if anyone’s face looks asymmetrical, they’re unhealthy either - in fact studies have shown that the degree of symmetry of a face doesn’t have that much to do with health - but certain genetic disorders can, indeed, make people look asymmetrical.

The deeper reason is that we want everything in the world to be explainable, because only then can we organize our lives and control our destinies. And explainability requires conformity, that is to say, conformity to order. We don’t want something to come out of nowhere. The people in front of you are already in a long line, and you come and automatically get in the back of the line and continue that line, and that’s normal, and everybody’s at peace. If you suddenly have to create a split in the middle of the line, you are a threat to everyone.

And of course you don’t want excessive order. A blank sheet of paper with nothing on it, that’s the highest symmetry, but we don’t like that. We want some kind of balance between change and order. And the ideal change is one that follows some order. For example, in poetry, you want it not to be a cliché, but you also want it to rhyme.

You can transcend order, but you shouldn’t disrupt it.

From Day Lesson: The Hidden Mechanisms of Social Order

Reader Maxwell: Wan Sir, through your preface, and according to my own insights from teaching economics principles to students in school, can economics be seen as the “etiquette” of modern society? For example, in economics, when we talk about demand and margins, we are teaching human beings to prioritize their desires.

Wagner’s reply -

I very much agree with this approach, and I think economics is a compulsory course for modern citizens, and should become a necessary skill, just like the “six arts” that were compulsory for the children of the ancient nobility.

The study of economics is fundamentally not about “how to make money” or “how to do business” but about “how to act rationally”. That’s why game theory is part of economics. Economics should be the “zero-order reasoning” that guides our lives, while psychology and behavioral science can only serve as first-order corrections to zero-order reasoning.

For example, economics says that the better the quality of a good, the greater the demand for it, and the greater the demand, the higher the price, which is zero-order reasoning. There may be times when a company sells a poor quality item at a high price through advertising and marketing, but it must be clear to anyone who has studied economics that that is not the right way to go, and that it is not sustainable, because the consumer will ultimately be rational.

Or if a person is not that rational for a while, then knowledge of economics can make him more rational. And economists can also prove that rationality really is good for you. A young person with a little sense of ‘opportunity cost’ can also make a better queue of desires.

In particular, basic concepts like supply and demand, marginal thinking, and opportunity cost should be everyone’s guide to making decisions on a daily basis. Then there are Adam Smith’s free market philosophy, Ricardo’s comparative advantage, Schumpeter’s disruptive innovation, Hayek’s spontaneous order, Keynes’s liquidity preference, and animal spirits. …… These are all concepts that anyone who wants to speak out on public affairs must first understand before they can do so, and if they don’t even understand these basic economic ideas, they simply aren’t qualified to “worry about the world. If you don’t understand these basic economic ideas, you are not qualified to “worry about the country”.

I hope you will teach your students more about this. Economics is not a subject, but the self-cultivation of a modern understanding.

Reader vidson: So here’s the question: hierarchy stabilizes the system, so why do companies nowadays emphasize more and more on equality? For example, do not set up a variety of managers, the president’s office, everyone in the open room office. For example, the promotion of upward management. Recently, Zhang Yiming also said, bytes of the company’s internal, are not shouting what the general, what manager. Is it possible that hierarchy has side effects, and this side effect is to hinder the ability to innovate?

Reader Hongjun: Before the Internet company talked about organization flattening in the end what is a logic, and today’s content conflict?

Wan Wansteel replied -

Let’s not talk about modern companies, but let’s talk about ancient China. In addition to “rites”, the ancients also had a “music” arrangement. Ritual represents hierarchy, while music represents the harmonization of hierarchy.

Let’s take an example. I once saw a historian’s reconstruction of the seating plan of a banquet in the Spring and Autumn Period. Where did the host sit, where did the guest of honor sit, where did the elders sit, where did the juniors sit, where did the king sit, and where did the king sit, and what were the specifications of the wine vessels for the different positions, and how many people were served at a table, all of which were set out in great detail. This is each in its place, the order of seniority and inferiority, no one can overstep.

However, please note that each place is each place, with different glasses, but we drink the same wine, but the same wine. Especially if there is a cultural performance, especially if music is being played, everyone in the room is listening to the same music. Whoever tells a joke when the wine is almost gone, everyone laughs. There’s some kind of ceremony where the elders and the juniors stand up together and do the actions. This is music.

• Ritual means separate, but music means together. * Let’s drink this wine together, listen to music together, and celebrate good things together. Music creates a sense of equality, and with a sense of equality comes a sense of belonging. Confucianism is not about creating racial segregation by engaging in rituals and music, it’s about easing conflicts, it’s about creating a harmonious society. You drink too much at the banquet, sing a karaoke to take the opportunity to slightly mock the leadership, it does not matter, this occasion is to talk about equality.

Therefore, I bet that Confucius must be opposed to the modern society in some countries of the upper class to become what “invisible top”, eat and play are the people have never seen …… that will only aggravate social conflicts.

Strict hierarchies can lead to high levels of glucocorticoids, which can affect health and morale. Reconcile with music and replace a bit of glucocorticoids with oxytocin in order to achieve the ‘gentle hierarchy’ that Christakis talks about, and you’ll have a society that works well in the long run.

The proportions of the components of ritual and music are not fixed. People are much more independent in modern society, and equality must take precedence over hierarchy. Considering that we all have multiple identities, I may be your subordinate in the company, but I’m the one who leads you on the field, we don’t have to be too formal.

Internet companies use young, tech-savvy people with the most modern ideas, and should be more egalitarian than the average company. Especially if your company’s business requires creativity, it’s even more important to make sure that grassroots employees have the courage to speak up, so it’s best to flatten the management level.

I understand that Internet companies have a fancy name for everything from the boss to the employees up and down, also to promote a sense of equality. The point is that our East Asian culture is so deeply influenced by Confucianism that people are born with a strong sense of hierarchy, and sometimes employees can’t even speak up when they meet their bosses. You may have heard the story that there was a time when Korean airlines always had accidents because the co-pilots in the cockpit did not dare to tell the captain directly that there was now a problem. The Korean solution was to require that only English be spoken in the cockpit: there are not as many “honorifics” in English as there are in Korea, and a sense of equality was instantly created.

Xie’s mistake was to completely replace hierarchy with equality, and his lesson is that even American Internet companies can’t afford to be hierarchical. In reality, you can indeed call the boss Pony, you can also point out Pony’s mistakes, you do not need to give Pony a toast …… but you must accept that Pony has the final say on matters related to the final decision, and Pony’s salary is ten times that of yours.

Note

[1] https://science.howstuffworks.com/why-do-get-so-much-pleasure-from-symmetry.htm

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