Fall-Through

[peterbirks]

I took a badly needed sleep this afternoon -- needed, and badly so, because I didn't get much sleep last night and because I am going to Mr and Mrs Harrington's this evening in the far wilds of Hertford.

So, I put together my stuff - mobile phone, camera, present, map and self-penned directions (because I am organized. I know where my life-jacket is when I am in a plane, and I know how to use it) and I went to sleep.

On getting up just now, I noticed that my phone was on the floor in the office. Weird, I thought. But, of course, what happened was that it rang and vibrated itself into a suicidal fall off the table. I wonder how many insurance claims there are a year related to mobiles vibrating themselves off ledges in some kind of suicidal lunacy, just because no-one gets to them in time to answer the call?

Anyhoo, the message on my voicemail was from Clive downstairs. After nine months of fucking around, the vendors of the place he was hoping to buy have decided to rent the place out instead. Cunts.

So, that's about as close to a fall-through as you can get. Nothing can possibly move until Clive and Debbie find a new place, so I'll be phoning the solicitor and bank on Monday to tell them that it's a fall-through. Maybe, in a few months' time, I'll start again, although I've become increasingly disenchanted with the thought of spending all that money. Especially as yesterday, partly because I was feeling a bit pissed off, I phoned my plumber to arrange getting a new bathroom fitted. I dunno, when you are young, and a bit pissed off, you buy a bar of chocolate or an ice-cream. Now I need to go out and buy a bathroom.

I bought Mr H a present and a card, since his birthday is somewhat significant (I hope people don't expect me to make a habit of this). But this morning I couldn't find the card, despite looking everywhere. Annoying.

But when I woke up I had a stroke of genius. I went to look where I might have put it. And, yes, there it was, in the fridge, between the packet of sliced ham and the pastrami. Where else?

My poker results on Fridays are universally bad this year, and I suspect that the main reason is not so much that the opposition is different, as that I am so dog-tired at the end of a week. After all, I do work eight hours, put in over an hour at the gym, spend six hours commuting and about eight hours playing cards. I'm bound to be tired by Friday. Perhaps I should just give Friday a complete blank until late in the evening, after I have had a sleep.

Bjork was on Later With Jools last night. Now, Bjork is difficult. Her music is challenging, and I'm really not too sure that I could listen to it too often. But I'm glad that she exists. Music needs artists like Bjork, who really seem to travel their own path, rather than, Rolling Stones-like, attempt to catch the flavour of the moment.

Comments

Life-jackets

[(Anonymous)]

I quote from The Economist's attempt at a truthful inflight announcement (7 Sep 2006):

"Your life-jacket can be found under your seat, but please do not remove it now. In fact, do not bother to look for it at all. In the event of a landing on water, an unprecedented miracle will have occurred, because in the history of aviation the number of wide-bodied aircraft that have made successful landings on water is zero."

-- Jonathan

Re: Life-jackets

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

Beware "The Black Swan". Jonathan. I'm sure that it will be very comforting for you, as your plane lands safely in the sea and the orders come for you to put on your lifejackets, to sagely inform the guy next to you that he was a fool for checking where his life-jacket was, because a safe landing had never happened before.

But, to be honest, I usually have no idea how to get my lifejacket out (although I do know where it is and I do know how to put it on), and I know the reason for its existence is to make it easier for people to find dead bodies after a crash. But, worryingly, I find myself actually remembering the safety videos these days, "just in case". (Except for any safety videos starting with Richard Branson, of course. What can you say about a man who deliberately invites someone to lunch at a restaurant that Branson owns, just so that he can impress the other guy by not having to pay?)

Re: Life-jackets

[(Anonymous)]

Well, I know it's under the seat and I vaguely remember more or less what to do with it: I do at least watch the demonstrations, but my memory is poor.

If a miracle occurs and I can't find my life-jacket, I guess my Plan B is to look for a small girl who has complacently found her life-jacket; yank it out of her hands, and put it on.

More seriously, it's an interesting question how unlikely a disaster has to be in order to be unworthy of serious consideration. True, if I survived a landing on water I might be very glad of a life-jacket. But such an event is very, very unlikely.

Do you take time to prepare yourself seriously for nuclear war, asteroid impact, invasion from outer space, major solar flare, earthquake, tidal wave, major epidemic, etc.? At some point there is a borderline between reasonable prudence and crankiness, but I'm honestly not sure exactly where it lies.

In the words of a song from the album you love to hate:

"Yes we're gonna have a wingding
A summer smoker underground
It's just a dugout that my dad built
In case the reds decide to push the button down
We've got provisions and lots of beer
The key word is survival on the new frontier"

-- Jonathan

Re: Life-jackets

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

This is indeed an interesting question, and most people either don't think about it or make woefully bad EV assumptions. The "Black Swan" reference is to Taleb's latest opus, apparently not as good as Fooled By Randomness, but, then again, it was a tough act to follow.

Now, in life, we tend not to be utterly rational about this kind of thing, and, in a way, I think that this is good. We would all be insufferable prigs if we analyzed risk/reward rationally every time we made a decision.

But, putting that aside, the "how unlikely?" question rests on four factors that can be applied to all human decision-making.

1) What is the probability of it occurring?
2) What is the cost of me preparing for the occurrence?
3) What degree of difference will my preparation make?
4) What is the effect on me if it occurs (with a sub-rider here of, if you wish, a beta distribution around the likely effect, if the absolute level of effect is uncertain)?

Now, you can apply your own parameters to the latter, and no-one can gainsay you. Some might say that "death" is the worst, while others might say "bankruptcy" and others might say "total disability".

Now, if preparing for an invasion from outer space required lots of effort (and since the negative EV of its occurrence is subject to a large standard deviation -- hell, it might be good!), then making that effort would seem to be wrong. In the case of the asteroid impact, we have the potential for a lot of effort and it not making much difference (same as for nuclear war). OK, you could argue about the specifics here until the moon turned green, but you get the general point.

So, the borderline between prudence and crankiness from a rational point of view can be delineated by your own personal equation, reliant on perceived likelihood, perceived degree of impact, and perceived effort on your own part (if you have nothing else to do, spending time preparing for an unlikely bad event is less irrational than if you have to give up some other useful occupation to prepare for the event). From a societal point of view (which has a different equation) what you might see as prudence, they might see either as paranoia or (at the other extreme) death-defying craziness.

Generally speaking, people tend to underestimate the likelihood of unlikely events. If I tell someone when they go on a long car journey that, if 1,000 of you did the same thing, the stats say that one of you would be likely not to come back alive, then, well, maybe you would take the train instead. But (and this is a general rule of thumb), if something is less than 5% likely to happen, the assumption is that it won't happen.

Only in certain areas (usually where much publicity is lavished on it by the media) do people overestimate risk. This has led to overprotection of children (because the perceived loss is very great, the chance of it occurring is overestimated, and it isn't a lot of effort to be over-protective of your child) and various other insane (for me) actions in society.

Meanwhile, in other areas of huge risk, people carry on blithely unaware of the risks that they are taking. Poor financial preparation for the future is one such.

PJ

Re: Life-jackets

[(Anonymous)]

Your analysis is of course very sensible. It did occur to me that the cost of constructing a decent fallout shelter and the cost of paying attention to the inflight demonstration are not of the same order of magnitude; but at the time I didn't want to derail my own train of thought by going into that.

In fact I do pay some attention to the inflight demonstrations, but more out of politeness than from any sense of self-preservation.

It may be worth mentioning that a life-jacket won't necessarily save your life even if the plane smacks down safely and you do everything right. You may just die of cold, thirst, shark, etc. But they say that while there's life there's hope.

I find myself imagining Richard Branson in an aviation emergency: "So long, suckers." (Lifts ashtray to reveal button for personal ejection seat.)

Incidentally, I boggle somewhat at the idea that life-jackets are to help in collecting dead bodies. I know that most human cultures have an irrational respect for dead bodies, but really, if someone's dead already, he may just as well be left there. The only point I can see in collecting the dead 'uns is to be sure that Joe Smith is really dead and that he isn't going to come ashore in New York two months later and write a book about his experiences.

Poor financial preparation: I think some people are unaware, and some people are vaguely aware but don't know what to do about it. Personally, I have no idea how I could possibly afford to provide adequately for my own retirement. Financial discipline is much easier for single people. You get married, it all goes out of the window.

-- Jonathan

[andy-ward-uk.livejournal.com]

The funny thing is, I don't find Bjork difficult to listen to at all. Or Tori Amos, whose later albums are frequently described as impenetrable or something similar. All that thrash metal I listened to in my teens must have toughened me up musically :-)

Andy.

Björk

[(Anonymous)]

Hm, I see I have an album of hers dating from 1993. Must dig it out and listen to it sometime.

-- Jonathan