Haircut
How do you know when you need a hair cut? How do you monitor gradual change so you know when to act?
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Transcript
Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by TellMeStudios for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm Fraser McGruer and I'm here with Peter Coghill and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights and this week we're discussing how to know when you need a haircut. Nick, how do you know when you need a haircut?
Speaker B:Well I mean this is a problem that I've come up with a technological solution for in fact which is I just have an appointment every three months maybe in my calendar which pops up and says book a haircut because I just don't naturally notice until it's too late you know that my hair is long. Somewhere between having short hair and having long hair there's a place where you ought to get your hair cut. Am I right guys? So I don't know where that place is and I miss it. It sails past and then I sort of think oh god I can almost put my hair in a ponytail. It's time to do something about that. So yeah but I think more generally what we want to talk about is this issue of sort of gradual changes and when it's time to do something about it and how we know.
Speaker A:Yeah absolutely. Now I hesitate to ask the question but Peter I'm not sure I don't think you know the answer to be honest but how do you know when you need a haircut?
Speaker C:Well I'm still trying to find the limit of when it becomes long hair so it's probably
Speaker B:pony tailable right about now but you've got just to explain Peter has quite curly hair so it tends to go out rather than down. I suspect when I start tripping over it then I'll need some sort of intervention. I think the answer is always. Peter could always
Speaker A:do with a haircut. Yeah yeah. When did you last have your hair cut Peter? Must be six months ago. Because unfortunately this is quite a sad subject for me. It is a painful topic because you know I don't have much hair anymore and I'm losing my hair. I've lost my hair. A careless bugger. Where has it gone? And what's annoying for me actually I mean we'll get on to the proper thing in a moment but what's annoying for me is I now have to have more haircuts than when I had hair and the reason why it's got a very low tolerance for looking out of shape because when you've got less follicles and the hairdresser was telling me about this is it very quickly starts to look like a comb over and the reason why it's got nothing to lean against and so it will just lean against the scalp and so I now have to have a haircut every week. Yeah but concomitantly there's less hair to cut so do you get a discount? Well sort of in as much as a haircut for me is now a shave. What do they call it? Clippers. Right. And yeah there's a cheaper rate for that. But what's annoying is is even so that would still be too expensive doing that every week and
Speaker B:so I have to do it myself. Well and I mean look this is an even more gradual change but how do you know when you're bald enough to not need to does a man with one hair still
Speaker A:have to go to the hairdressers? Good question yeah and that's when I think I started to realise. Well what I realise is how soon do you realise or when do you realise that you
Speaker B:need to have more frequent haircuts yeah? Yeah I mean I because I'm getting there obviously I've got receding I've had my hair is weird it does it it fits and starts I had a perfectly square hairline until one day when I was 18 I was combing my hair after a after a hair wash and lo and behold suddenly there was about a centimetre of you know of recediness and then everything's fine and it settles down and then at some point suddenly another centimetre goes and I think I'm very. Relaxing, remitting, male pattern baldness. Well yeah and the thing is I think the key the trip the trip wire for me is going to be when there's when there's the hole at the back at the moment I haven't got a hole at the back so I'm still clinging on there. Yeah yeah so and just as a final word but when
Speaker A:I did have hair and needed regular haircuts I didn't know the answer to the question we're posing and in fact on more than one occasion an employer used to had to take me to different employers had to take me physically out and to hairdressers and sit me down and
Speaker C:tell someone to cut my hair. I mean that this is partly why I'm letting my hair grow one to enjoy the hair when I still got it and to to rally against these many years of working for employers when there was a certain kind of look required I'm now just damning the
Speaker B:man and growing my hair. Well for all we know it might just be one hair that's really kind of coiled up and wrapped around your head. I'm not quite sure yeah what's going
Speaker A:on there but look let's bring this back round so gradual changes had we know when to intervene one of Nick's answers there was technology and just an automatic reminder. Peter can
Speaker C:you wade in on this what are your thoughts? Well I don't think there's a one one size fits all solution because lots of things in in the world thinking you know like global warming and other small problems like that they there might be a cliff edge beyond which is either too late to do anything or is it nothing can be done for it so the for haircuts so the hair grows I presume in quite a linear way it doesn't really speed up or slow down I think it does but anyway go on but it's in a fairly predictable way but there are bigger things like global warming where we have no we have no accurate model for how things might change so just assuming that it's going to incrementally change and incrementally warm up as we pump more CO2 into the atmosphere might be might be over simplistic might be dangerous because it might reach some sort of day after tomorrow kind of cliff edge and and go nuts so and obviously the scale of that problem deserves a different kind of solution to whether or not to cut your hair but this is I think this is in this is the interesting bit is that there are some things that we can understand with simple measures like hair length and then other things which are pretty obscure and pretty obscured to us like what the what the consequences of certain things are and that's when this when when a strategy might be
Speaker B:required for yeah I think there's two there's two things here one is one is how do we know whether something's become true and the other is you know how do we know when we ought to act in a certain circumstance I think they're quite different the first the first the question about you know how do we know when I've got long hair or how when does you know when do we when does someone what height is someone tall you know those kinds of questions are quite there's a lot of philosophical literature about that about you know how there's a paradox called the heap paradox or the sorites paradox you know where you say well if you've got adding one grain of sands to a heap of sand is not going to stop it you know it's not going to turn it into a heap or you know likewise you know if a child's a child one day there would be a child the next day there isn't so it seems weird to imagine there's some day where they just stop being a child but of course that then leads to this paradox because you say well if a child at age one day is a child then there'll be a child on day two likewise you know by the principle induction a 30 year old is also a child you know unless unless it's true that there is some day somewhere where it actually changes and the question is is that some decision about how we use language or is it a fact about the world that we perhaps have uncertain knowledge of or or what it's kind of an interesting question a separate separate to the question of when do we decide that it's time to take action and and and how does that play out and I think that's that's a you know in a way I think in practical terms perhaps more more interesting to try and ask that question is at what point do we say you know you can apply similar sort of reasoning to it and say well at some point in the last 100 years we should have taken action on global warming we should have done something earlier but what was there does that mean that there was a particular day where we should have said right now we're
Speaker A:gonna stop yeah I know I think you're one of the things you're so close to there as well which is an issue I think is just a more practical one is and you said the word and how do we do that and you know if it's I've got more or less agency over my hair pretty much but what there is a bit falling out yeah probably growing more of it then yeah and but something like in an anarchic international system how do you you know I've got control of my hair but I don't necessarily have control over the the processes to intervene in something like global warning warming but anyway I guess that's getting off the point because it's we're talking about no I think it's completely the point because
Speaker B:it could because it's to do with how we still need to know when yeah and but it's also because I mean okay so let's this is you know the collective action problem basically is that you've got some set of actions that will only succeed if everyone does them you know at the same time say how when when you're dealing with it I mean is that's kind of easy when you have a static situation and you go look we know we need a well in the village you know we'll just all decide to build one one day what's difficult is that is where you know you have a situation where actually the river has been fine and then it gets gradually more and more dried up and at some point at some point you need a well and by the time you kind of notice or get get together it's too late you know that's and that's a lot of these international problems are to do with chain and and so you know you and you see that global warming is the most obvious example you know we're actually it's a huge amount of effort to try and coordinate and try and get everyone on side and of course you know dealing with the fact that everyone has slightly different priorities and you know industrialized countries are going to suffer more if you like from change from from from from controls on on co2 emission emissions so you've got there's a huge amount of effort has to go into those sorts of things but the similar I mean so you know it's not too dissimilar to how revolutions happen you know or even just looking at the States now that the Harvey Weinstein situation where you know he's he's been it's an industry it's not even a secret you know it's been his behavior has been known about for for decades but now something has happened to reach a tipping point that means you know everyone is coming out and and and he's now being you know prosecuted so you know those those kinds of collective action problems are really difficult and and I think you know probably how
Speaker A:do we how do we think about solving them how do we think about solving them Peter yeah no I think this is really difficult because we're talking about so many different examples from so many different areas so we talked about Harvey Weinstein is it Harvey yeah so we've talked about Harvey Weinstein we've talked about getting a haircut we've talked about global warming which are three I think very different situations but do we have some sort of common solution in terms of measurement of aims of when of whether to intervene of how to intervene is there some kind of you know central
Speaker C:answer to this these problems are prolific they're everywhere you know it's like when do you decide when do I need to repaint my living room or when do I when do we as a as a street need to start collecting more rubbish or you know where you know they're absolutely everywhere in every every level but they they they all in order to decide at what point is enough is enough they all need measuring so you need to measure it in some way so I know that's the only the only commonality is that any problem will have some way of measuring it that lets you work out how good or bad a situation is and then you can collectively decide at what point the tipping point is so if we take
Speaker A:the case of Harvey Weinstein how do we mean what is how can we define the problem there and what is the tipping point when we know that we need to do something yeah I think who is we well I think
Speaker B:there's the first of all there's the measurement if this is for a situation where we've got some change over time which is one thing the second one which is how do we take collective action which is not so much a measurement but more of a coordination problem and of course technology offers bountiful solutions to that now I mean you could say that the you know in the case of Harvey Weinstein is the the ability of people to communicate into broadcast has enabled you know people to come forward and likewise you look at things like the the I forget which colour of revolution we're on now but the Arab Spring and you know the the fact that people were able to use Twitter to coordinate and of course that government's now to go for Twitter the first thing they do if anyone's worried about an uprising you know is cut off the means of coordinating and you know protesters in before we had Twitter had lots of interesting it's interesting that different solutions were converged on so you you there's there's a thing a type of protest called a it sounds like casserole a casserolazo which is very prolific actually you look at the history of revolutions it's where people bang pots and pans as a signal to start a protest and the great thing why this has why this is very advantageous is people can do it deniably before they need to come out on the streets they can all do it at home and hear each other banging their pots and pans and when there's sufficiently loud banging you can infer that actually you're going to be numerous enough to be safe and of course that you know it's been found all from Argentina to Northern Ireland to you know so again it's a sort of it's a solution to that problem of having to coordinate action where where the success will only come from having a certain number of people on board so yeah I mean I think basically information technology offers us a huge increase in our ability to take collective action okay so I'm struggling I was going to say I'm
Speaker A:struggling to see a way forward in our discussion but I'm actually struggling to see a way to conclude our discussion what have we discovered in the last 15 minutes well we've acknowledged
Speaker C:that collective action is hard because of the coordination costs but also that you don't know you have a problem unless you're measuring it in some way so global warming it might be measuring the change global changes in climatic temperature for haircuts it has some length and then you can apply some either arbitrary or some fundamental limit as to what you you're going to accept and use that as a sort of benchmark by which to trigger point in which to take action
Speaker B:but I think let's not underestimate that this is really hard right it's really hard institutionally to instigate a change where everything is superficially the same as it was yesterday and you know it's not I don't there isn't a big solution it's a major problem but it there isn't it isn't something where there's a massive solution I mean you could say yeah let's all sit down and agree on some cutoffs at which point we'll take some take some more significant action but just getting people to do that getting people to commit in that way is very hard
Speaker A:and we're just sorry to interrupt you but I mean if even if that's just even then that's difficult that's talking about an institution but let's say you're talking about an industry like the movie industry and how do you sort of how do you organize the the principles and the points of action to prevent sexual harassment for example of actresses that's quite difficult to pull off really I think there are things you can do but that's really tricky yeah I think I think the
Speaker C:acknowledging that any kind of sexual harassment or is is unacceptable I think the tipping point with Harvey Weinstein was the the fact that enough people felt that they were able to come a come out together to bring this guy down because he's a you know he's a he's a he's a big guy in the industry so he's sort of protected by his power and had had they not been able to collectively come out to all together similar to the Jimmy Savile thing the same you know no one's going to believe one or two people word against the Jimmy Savile a big a big celebrity well thought of blah blah blah until lots and lots of people start bringing accession yeah it's and
Speaker B:it is to do it's and I think this is why this is something of a phenomenon in recent years um because we have the technology now to do that you know we people are able to come out and coordinate um but I think that that's that sort of that so I think that we're on the verge of having mechanisms to solve the collective action problem in a sense but I don't think I mean that we haven't necessarily got the mechanisms yet to to think about how to solve in some meaningful way the gradual change problem and um and that's why we always overshoot you know we we governments always take action on things when it's too late you know you look at um you I mean the what the thing that I've noticed living in London is is homelessness you know it was a huge problem in the late 80s and early 90s uh and then a lot of money was put into you know shelters and so on it really completely disappeared I mean almost completely disappeared homelessness from the certainly from people living on the streets and and now I've seen it sort of gradually reappearing I think as they've been you know cutbacks after the after the recession and uh cutbacks in public spending and I think well you know I know perfectly well this is going to become a political issue again you know at the moment we're worried about Brexit and immigration and and that sort of thing and at some point people are going to start realizing oh there's actually there's loads of homeless people again and and we're going to take action about it and it's going to be too late and I feel like that's almost there's there's very little you can do about that you know because it is to do with um you know people only have a certain amount of institutional capital uh and and if you know if if it is the same today as it was yesterday and most days are pretty similar to the day before uh you know it's it takes a lot it takes a lot of institutional capital to stand up and say well let's do let's do something about this now um you know in a way you kind of have to wait for it to become more of a problem than you want it to be and unless we
Speaker C:could devise some sort of universal metric for how the the level of badness one homeless person causes and keep track of the number of homeless people so if we could monitor if we could put a metric in terms of lost GDP perhaps yeah or utility or utility or whatever some sort of measure as to how what what what level you know how bad a homeless person is and we can engineer our policies so that we keep it below a certain level yeah I mean that would be I think that would be
Speaker B:a kind of very idealized way of doing things that probably ought to be where you know where we have if you like a kind of uh explicit utility function where the government says that we don't we think homelessness is bad you know it's bad for the homeless people obviously it's bad for uh for other sorts of external reasons and um you know here's how bad we think it is and when that number might go up or down but the point is that it gives us a rationale for action um I mean you know you can perhaps hypothesize that that's possible now I think it is technologically it is possible it's just so far removed from how politics is done um you know that's that's real politics as opposed to institutional politics that's hard hard to see how we can get there
Speaker A:anytime soon and on that note unfortunately have to wrap up there I think that also still leaves us with the question if we transfer those questions to another problem which is you know how do we know when Peter's hair has got to a point where it's bad for him and that it's bad for society um and all I know is that it's if we'd long past that point yeah exactly that point has gone
Speaker C:so long I can't get in my house so I become homeless maybe that's
Speaker A:yeah well yeah and also how do you know when it's time to finish a podcast thank you very much for listening to the Cognitive Engineering podcast I'm Fraser McGruer we've been here with Peter Coghill and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights and until next time goodbye
