Moaners

Speaker A: 00:00:00

Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering podcast produced by me, Fraser McGruer for Aleph. 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 here with Peter Coghill and Nick Hare of Aleph, and this week we're discussing moners. Peter, famously of a sunny disposition,

Speaker B: 00:00:26

go for it. Famously sunny disposition, yeah, indeed. So if you're a user of Google Maps back in November, it won't have gone past your notice that there was a significant change to the colouring used to render the map. I'm worried because I use it all the time. And whether or not it's, you know, for the better or not, Google don't do things fairly like that, very drastic like that without good reason. But it sparked a big uproar, as everything does on the internet. So there were lots of people complaining about it and getting vocal on Twitter and saying, oh, bring the old colours back. They were better for this, that reason, the other. And I mean, I personally, I think it's as good, if not better. Peter, give us a description. What are we talking about? What have they actually done? So the main, most obvious difference is, if you think back, Google Maps used to have major roads as a sort of goldy, orangey colour. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I think, so you see, they were sort of, they were, they stood out on the kind of grey, off-white background. But they've made them more muted, they're now sort of a darker grey, they're now a dark grey on top of that. Oh, yeah, here we are, got it in front of me. Yeah, go on, yeah. So yeah, Google up a sort of comparison. We're living in hell, dark grey roads, whatever next. Humanity. I know, so get your moans out on X. So, but it got, I wasn't concerned about the map change, personally, it doesn't make much difference. In fact, I think it's probably slightly better, it's less garish when you're using it as a sat-nav. But it got me thinking like, about moaning about things, especially when they're things which are pretty amazing, which these Google Maps, Apple Maps, whatever you use, they're pretty amazing, free thing, that doesn't cost you anything at the point of use. Do you kind of, should you just rein your moans in? Lump it. Lump it. Yeah. If you're using this thing that's costing you nothing, you know, you're giving your data away, but it's costing you nothing, you know, or do you have a right to complain? Does it, being free, diminish your right to criticise it? What, how's the best way to complain? Are there better ways to complain? Well, venting online. Yeah, venting online versus perhaps some more critical detail. Sending the Maps dev team a kind of detailed user experience note. Why you think it's not so good, yeah. And do we, yeah, do we complain too much in general? Aren't we a bunch of whingy fuckers?

Speaker C: 00:03:26

Yes. Yes, yes, I agree we are. But are you moaning about people moaning? We are a meta moaner, yeah. Look, I think before we actually tackle the substance, right, let us just stop and reflect on quite how incredible Google Maps is. When I was a kid, I remember talking to my dad about, like, our dream thing. And one of them was like, imagine if you could just zoom into anywhere in the world and see that place, right? And actually, like, see what the shops are like there. You could just beam yourself in. You know, that's quite apart from all of the pathfinding and everything, the fact that, you know, you can get anywhere. I mean, you know, people, I think we have forgotten what life was like when that didn't exist. You know, if you were going to meet someone at a pub in an area of Britain you'd never been to before, well, you had to take a map in advance. You had to buy a map or you'd have to get to the station, ask someone which way it was. You know, we've forgotten quite how difficult life was without Google Maps. Well, I say Google Maps, obviously, kind of online maps, because there are other map providers. For example, the app Waze, you might have heard of. Yeah, I'm not familiar with it. When I was a kid, one of the

Speaker B: 00:04:45

things I used to love doing on long journeys was just looking at the map, looking at the road map and following where we were and working out where we were and seeing where things were in relation to anything else. And I had this sort of this, it must have been seven, eight, nine, ten years old, I can't remember, but I had this sort of working out a sort of design for this complicated electromechanical equivalent of a map that would have a little light that would follow you where you were. Yeah, cool. Behind a paper sheet. Oh, right. Oh, that's cool. I like that. Yeah, that sounds nice. Which was obviously surpassed by the kind of maps we have. I prefer your solution. Another anecdote though, when I was, my first proper job after university was as a test engineer and we were working on a tactical military radio system that had, part of it was a sort of computer that plugged into it and that computer could send pro forma messages to other parts of the network. And one of the applications on those sort of laptops was a mapping thing. So you could plot where military units were, you could provide situation reports about areas and things on, with reference to the map. And it was shit. It was utter, utter dog shit. And one of my, my job was partly, partly was testing this app and finding bugs and sort of reporting it back to the devs to get them fixed. And this was right at the time when Google Earth appeared. And it was like, it was like, like space technology compared to this thing that we were, we were working with. Always the way. And you know, the sort of customer feedback was, we want that. I don't mean, and then all these

Speaker C: 00:06:29

And I think in about the year: 2001

Speaker A: 00:06:58

of everything. It's just incredible. And I suppose one of the things that's nice is for us is we've been in that transition and we saw that stuff. And I mean, I do also similarly, I remember the first time I used Google Maps on my mobile phone when I was walking around London once with the family and I was, and it was every 30 seconds, I was stopping and showing my family going, look, look, this is it. You see that little blue thing, that's us, you know, and that's not that long ago. And that was remarkable. But anyway, they've got grey roads. So it's bollocks. The whole thing's

Speaker B: 00:07:23

rubbish. Well, I mean, probably let's kick off with why do we complain? Why oh why? Why oh why do we complain? And why do we feel like entitled to complain in that kind of just splurge it out on Twitter publicly? Why do people think that's a good thing to do? And is it in any way helpful? So Peter, what are your thoughts on this then? Well, so I mean, I, I think the part of the entitlement question comes from, Google Maps has been around for, I don't know, maybe we should look it up. But it's 10 years or so I've been using Google Maps for at least.

Speaker C: 00:08:08

Yeah, I'd say it's this really took off with smartphones. So I guess we're looking at about

Speaker B: 00:08:12

2010 or something would be when it went mainstream. So it's had enough time to become kind of part of the background fabric of people's lives is that people sort of utterly depend on it. And it's become the go to thing in your pocket all the time to look things up and find your way around. And in that time, I don't think it's had quite such a radical design change. They kind of decided on some colours one afternoon, I don't know. And they implemented that. And it hasn't really changed. It's had more details being added and new features and things, but the actual map didn't change much. So it, you know, superficially, it could appear quite a big change to some people. And that, you know, being a big change, and being a big change like that might trigger, you know, people's sort of sense of loss aversion, and things where, you know, we feel we feel pain, we feel the cost of loss greater than we feel the benefits of gain. And so that's, so that's possibly one dimension. But I also like the, you've been relying on this thing, it's like, it's like, you know, your your favourite pair of shoes. If somebody suddenly came along and swapped them out for a new pair of shoes, even if they were better, you'd be like, I've had my control of my life taken away in some way. Someone has changed something without my permission or direct input. So there's a sort of loss of control thing going on.

Speaker C: 00:09:46

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean, I think that that, you know, there's, I don't know how relevant it is that Google Maps is essentially free. You know, morally here. I mean, for example, if I was, well, if I was paying for it, and it changed, you know, perhaps I'd, I feel, I think it would be less, it would be less ambiguous, you know, am I entitled to complain about a change to something I'm paying for? I think most people say, of course you are. Of course, you're entitled to complain about it. And I think, I think it, you know, it's fair to say you're entitled to complain about something you get for free. It just, I think, I think people then want to temper it with a kind of but, which is, you know, perhaps you're not being appreciative enough of the fact that you're getting it for free, right? I think there's a kind of sense of, you know, if you're paying for it, it's a full on contract, right? You're not getting, I'm paying them, you know, £5 a month, and I expect orange roads, goddammit. Now I've got grey roads, I'm not paying for that. It's an outrage. And you can take your custom to one of the many other map providers. If it's free, I think, I think people have a sense that there's a different morality kicks in. But we, and I think we should discuss that specifically. But first of all, I think we should cover the legal side of free stuff. We definitely should. And just before we do,

Speaker A: 00:11:13

I hate to be this guy. Yeah. But I want to add a little bit more rigour to our research. That's good thinking. And our data. Okay, go on. Because I think it occurs to me that there could be an issue here with sample. And I call it a git amplification. The kind of people who are active on those forums are precisely the kind of people I would suggest would be more moany. Okay, right. And I think if you will walk out into these streets right here now, and just sample 100 random people as random as that can be, most people would go, I don't care. Yeah. Oh, has it changed? Oh, right. Yeah. And very few of them would care. And I think it's just where we're looking for this, we're going to find that kind of moany stuff. But anyway, just as a just putting that out there. But yeah, pick up, go for the legal stuff. Yeah, I mean, so interestingly,

Speaker C: 00:11:55

eir bottle of ginger beer, as: 1932

Speaker B: 00:15:53

detour, I think, for that reason. Interesting. Okay. Peter? Is there a dimension that we can explore where, you know, we should be perhaps, flip it on its head and be a bit more gracious about it? You know, given that, perhaps parking in the fact that Google is offering this not out of the goodness of their heart, but because it's getting them lots of advantageous data that they can use for other things. But it is a valuable service these days, and lots of things would fall apart if it went away suddenly. So should we perhaps be a bit more grateful? Or at least not, if not grateful, then a bit more helpful in our criticism when there are changes that we don't like? And how could we do that? I mean, a fairly unimaginative idea for me would be if you didn't like something about a change in an app or something that you used, rather than rant about it on Twitter, it'd be much more useful to explain in a sort of calm, rational way, what exactly about the change you didn't like and submit that to the devs or to Google in some way. Just giving them some useful feedback, rather than going off the handle and

Speaker A: 00:17:16

saying it's crap, it's horrible, change it back. I mean, look, the obvious answer is yes, but... Sorry, to what question? No, which is, should we be more rational about it? And rather than moan about it, shouldn't we sort of be more considerate? And it could be more effective by, you know, if we don't like a change to write to the developers, right? And the answer seems to be yes. But human nature. I mean, I don't know.

Speaker C: 00:17:41

Well, I think there's a few things, right? Change is costly, right? To me as a user, any change is the supermarket eggs problem again, right? When the supermarkets move the eggs, it's a massive pain in the ass. It's like I've just about remembered after going to the shop for five years, where the eggs are, because they're never where you expect them to be. And you finally got the hang of that. And that's when they move the eggs somewhere else. As sure as eggs are eggs, that's when they move them. Now, that's just costly, right? And if the roads have changed colour, it's costly, because you have to now adjust your, you've got to relearn what, you know, what I'm looking at means, right? So in that regard, you know, it's bad for you if they change. Now, it might be in the long run, it's better because it's, you know, easier to see something about where you're going or whatever. But let's just accept that it is a cost to you to have to relearn something. Now, do you, but you're, you know, you're getting it for free, and it's awesome. So have you got the right to complain about it? And I think the answer is patently yes. You, obviously, you have the right to complain about anything you like. No one is saying you shouldn't complain about it. You should sit there being grateful to Google. But, and I think just to pick up the, you know, Peter's idea, I mean, first of all, complaining is potentially useful to Google in the first place, because they, you know, maybe they actually are going to learn about a way to improve their service. Why do they want to do that? Well, obviously, as Peter says, they're not, they're not doing this totally for free. They want people to like Google, they want people to like the brand. But also, they're getting tons of data, which makes all their other services better. They're getting something out of this. It's helpful for them to know if people are hating their app so that, you know, I mean, that's just useful. But I think there's another good reason to complain about, well, I'd say two other reasons to complain that you should complain about free things. One is that, actually, maybe the free thing is poor quality, and it's outcompeting something that was good. Let me give you an example. The Metro newspaper, tabloid quality, right? And I'm going back a bit now because nobody reads a newspaper anymore. They're all just playing Candy Crush, as far as I can tell. But, you know, people stop buying newspapers. They only now get the Metro because it's like, well, okay, I know it's rubbish, but it's not worth paying a

Speaker A: 00:20:04

pound for a Times. Well, also, specifically at the time, it out-competed with the Evening Standard,

Speaker C: 00:20:07

which at the time was a paid-for paper. Yeah, and of course, then all newspapers go to zero cost. They're full of adverts, the quality of the journalism suffers, etc. I think that it's fair to complain about that. And particularly with something like Google Maps, you could say it's competing with an A to Z or some other thing like Ordnance Survey Maps, for example, like Google Maps. If it's bad, if it's worse, and it's making the industry suffer, it might be that I suffer, you know, indirectly as a result of that, right? Because now, I know this won't happen, but if Ordnance Survey went out of business because of Google Maps, well, Ordnance Survey Maps are way better. So suddenly, we're all worse off now, right? So I think it's fair to complain about that. But also, I think there's a sense in which sometimes I feel that my complaints about things, which are good but could be better, are like this sense of it could be better at no cost. You could just change the roads back to orange and it would be better, right? And it doesn't cost you anything because that's just one line of code. And I feel like the same way about things like Game of Thrones, great TV programme, we all loved it, you know, until like the last season, and then we all hated it. And it feels like, well, okay, should I be just grateful because Game of Thrones exists at all, right? But no, because I feel entitled to say, this could have been better for no cost. You know, this could have been better, and it doesn't, it would have been cost them the same to make it. So I want to complain about that. And I feel like that's another legitimate reason why you can complain about free stuff. So in this sort of raging debate on

Speaker A: 00:21:47

moaners, what's that all about? Right? What's your kind of overall conclusion to this? Which is, is it kind of, yeah. Is it simply that? Yeah, it's fair enough that we complain about stuff.

Speaker C: 00:21:59

That's fine. I mean, yeah, I but I think what Peter was, Peter mentioned this concept of gratitude. And I think we need to go there. Like, like, okay, fine, you can moan about stuff. No one's going to take that right away. Unless you're in North Korea or whatever. Of course, you can complain about things. But is the issue that we're not grateful enough for the things we have? Should we spend more time really thinking about how great Google Maps is,

Speaker A: 00:22:25

even if the roads are the wrong colour? Yes. So that brings us back to exactly what you were saying earlier on, Peter, which is, well, shouldn't we be more grateful? Go for it.

Speaker B: 00:22:33

Well, yeah, whether or not the gratitude is beneficial to Google, it's very beneficial to you, as an individual. So one of the one of the key kind of tenants in lots of psychological therapies is being appreciative of what you've got, rather than pining after the

Speaker A: 00:22:54

things you haven't. There's horrible lists online, you know, write down every day,

Speaker B: 00:22:57

your reasons to be cheerful, your journal, how grateful you are. I mean, that's a parody. But it's true. So, you know, if you're anxious or depressed because you didn't get a promotion, or you feel like you're a failure, one of the key things in CBT is to write down what are the, you feel in some way useless or helpless as a person, write down the things that you have achieved? Yeah, you know, but you know, and have you had children? Have you graduated? Do you have, do you own your house, all these sorts of quite key milestoney things? Yeah, that, and that's a sort of simple exercise that can really make quite a big difference to your mood. Because you realise that actually, the thing that you're pining for often pales in comparison to the things you have achieved. So gratitude has a introspective benefit. Now, does it have a, does it have a benefit to Google? I'd say perhaps not so much, you know, unless you're, unless you're sending them money for no reason at all to say, I like your app, here's, buy yourself a coffee. Yeah. Google probably doesn't, doesn't want to scratch the sides. I don't think Google would give us a

Speaker A: 00:24:10

toss about this unless it managed a critical matter and started affecting business. But it

Speaker B: 00:24:14

does in other sort of software domains. So a lot of open source software, there's a bit of a crisis going on because there's some very key bits of software written that are used in loads of other downstream things. So bits of free, little free module that does some particular thing. A lot of these projects are maintained by single individuals who do it as a part-time kind of thing, just on the side, part of the main job, aside from their main job. And they don't get paid for this, this labour. And they sort of build, this is building up dependencies on what could just sort of fall apart. Now it's likely in a lot of cases that if they just said, right, I've had enough, I can't do this anymore, somebody else would sort of pick it up or a team would sort of form around it. But a lot of these open source projects are sort of having to find crowdsourcing funding approaches. And often on, if you look at GitHub pages and things of these things, there's a sort of donate button and you can sort of donate three or five or $10 or something. And it just helps. And actually, yeah, I mean, Wikipedia is another.

Speaker A: 00:25:29

Well, you walk the walk on this, right? Because I know that you donate to Wikipedia, don't you?

Speaker B: 00:25:32

I have done, yeah. I haven't done in a while.

Speaker A: 00:25:35

Yeah, but nonetheless, you've done it. And so I know you're sort of, yeah, I think that's admirable.

Speaker C: 00:25:40

I feel like everyone should though. Have you? Yeah, of course. I do it every year. Yeah, no, I definitely do too. No, I mean, the thing is that, yeah, I mean, is that the same? I mean, it's a sort of gratitude, I suppose. Round us off a bit. Well, no, I mean, so I think let's just cover some arguments why you shouldn't be grateful for stuff, right? Because it's fair enough that those people should, the ungrateful people should get a hearing here. I think to some extent, the things we're talking about, are they truly free? Right? Is Google Map, is there some sinister reason why Google are giving us free maps? Well, it's probably not very sinister reason, but they do want the data, the data is useful for them to improve services. Now, in fact, you have the right to switch off, you know, your data, you can stop them taking your data, but obviously, by default, they will be gathering it. So in a sense, you might think, well, actually, you know, I'm the product here. You might have like, you know, as they say that, yeah, if it's free, you're the product, you know, they're winning, because they're, you know, it's branding, as I said, they sort of out competing the, you know, the other paper map providers, and eventually that they might be fostering a dependency. In some future date, they might decide to charge for Google Maps when suddenly we can't live without it, you know, so you might, you might, you might feel like that. Then, you know, yeah, so I sort of think that deserves to be thought about, well, you know, is it free when people are giving stuff away for free? Is it really free? But I think in general, okay, so there are some other some more, you know, contractual reasons why gratitude is good. So I mean, first of all, you know, the incentivizes if I if I give you gratitude for doing something for me for free, well, it incentivizes doing things for free, right? So there's a kind of now, then there's an argument of, well, you know, but if you're doing it, because you want the gratitude, well, it's not really free, I'm having to pay you in gratitude. So I think, I think really proper gratitude must be unexpected and voluntarily given, or at least, you know, when I do a thing for free, I shouldn't be doing it because I want gratitude, then it isn't truly free, right? So there's a sense in which the sorts of acts which deserve gratitude are the ones which don't expect gratitude, which don't demand it, right. So there's anyway, but I suppose it, you know, I'm just sort of saying there are reasons to be grateful for things, because, because, you know, the incentives that it has, it acts as a kind of social incentive to do pro social things. But I think, you know, to Peter's point here, which is, is it good for you to just be grateful for things in general? And I think, you know, Peter said, it's good for your mental health, that seems clearly the case. But it's also, you know, we can think of that as a way of trying to avoid the hedonic treadmill, you know, which is this, this phenomenon, absolutely pervasive, where, you know, when you get something good, and, you know, a new thing of any kind, you get new TV, get new car, get new jumper, you know, you, you spend a few days really enjoying it. And then eventually, you just adjust back to the same level of happiness you were at before. But stopping and going, hey, this is a great jumper, or the picture on this TV is brilliant. Or, you know, isn't Google Maps amazing? Actually, you know, I think it actually by making you conscious of it, it's a way of reversing that, that hedonic treadmill, you know, albeit temporarily. And so, you know, you genuinely can pay attention to something, discover that you're getting enjoyment out of something, which, you know, in a sense you weren't conscious of before. So, yeah, absolutely go.

Speaker A: 00:29:26

Nice, nice sum up. And I think we've touched on all sorts of stuff, brushed up against all sorts of things. Quick question. Go for it. Super simple. Best map? Oh, well, I can fill that out a bit more. Yeah. Which is, can you think of a time in your life when you've come across a map and gone, I love this map. Yeah, I can think of a few occasions. Go for it, Peter. Well, I've got three. So my go

Speaker B: 00:29:54

to map for going outdoors would be OS Maps, because they are brilliant for hiking. Digital version or? Digital is convenient, but if I'm going out in the boolies, I'll take a paper one. In a little plastic envelope in case it rains. Yeah, exactly. I'll get the pre-laminated version.

Speaker C: 00:30:11

Have you got one of them little sort of see-through compasses with the, which you can,

Speaker B: 00:30:15

yeah, classic. And with mils on it, not degrees. Yeah, of course. Mine is in radians. Anyway, carry on. So second favourite is probably nautical charts. Because they are. Admiralty charts. They're equally beautiful and functional. Their beauty comes from their function. But they kind of, they look nice anyway. Especially the old ones. What I love about

Speaker C: 00:30:43

those is the way it's a kind of weird inversion of normality where the sea is just a blue blob you don't care about and all the details on land. And then you look at an Admiralty chart and it's tons of detail, little sandbanks and numbers everywhere with depth. And the land is just this white space you don't care about. Yeah, I don't care about that. I'm not going there.

Speaker B: 00:31:00

And then, but my favourite favourite is a pretty good open source, sort of free equivalent to OS maps, which is open street maps and open cycle maps. There's an astonishing amount of detail on those. And they're free under license to use for different applications. But they do a pretty good job of, if you haven't got the OS map, of showing you where fairly small details like footpaths and things are that Google Maps can't.

Speaker A: 00:31:34

Yeah, nice, nice answers. So for me, I don't, it's not nothing particular, but it's just a moment I remember and this probably happened to all of us when I was about 11 or 12 being in a geography lesson. And, and the teacher saying, right, maps, you think you know what that's all about? Take a look at this. And it's when teachers start introducing you to maps, different ways of looking at the world, right? And portraying data and they were showing stuff like what we perceive to be an upside down map, or... Yeah, the Peter's projection. Yeah. And yeah, and also here is if here's a map by wealth, let's say, right? I mean, all that kind of stuff. And it was like, wow, which if you're 11 or 12, whatever it was, or certainly for me, it was, huh, okay. Which I think is quite an interesting cognitive step, really. That's mine. So, so yeah, absolutely revelatory. But yeah.

Speaker C: 00:32:24

Yeah, well, clear winner for me would be the maps you get at the beginning of fantasy books. Yeah. The obvious contender here is Middle Earth. Those fantastic maps you get at the beginning. There's such a kind of, you could sit there looking at it. And of course, the book takes you on a little tiny route, really, through what you imagine is an incredibly rich world. And obviously, we know that Tolkien, he himself was such an obsessive about this, that all of that detail is out there, you know, that there are histories of all these bits, which you'd never hear about in the stories. So, you know, I love, I just love looking at those maps of fantasy worlds. I've got a whole book of Middle Earth maps, which has been put together by obviously Tolkien obsessives who've kind of analysed all of the cues in the books to kind of work out precisely what Moria should have looked like. And there's all these kind of detailed 3D maps of all of these places in Middle Earth. But the one that I think really sparked my imagination more than any other was a series of what Americans call choose your own adventure books, but the called Lone Wolf, where, you know, it's kind of you, you're, the story is you're a monk, and you get, you know, your monastery gets attacked, and then you have to go out into the wilderness and sort of survive. And all of the books, I think there were probably 10 to 20 of them, they're in, they're in a series. So, you know, every and every, every book has the map in, and they're really beautiful maps, like all the mountains and everything, you kind of drawn individually. And you look at that at the beginning, and you go, wow, I'm going to get to explore this exciting, oh, I hope I go there, you know, and I was just, you know, that inspired me to make lots of fantasy maps of my own when I was about 11. And so yeah, fantasy maps, love

Speaker A: 00:34:12

them, real world, boring. Yeah, they're quite rich stuff, rich stuff. Okay, lovely. All right. Let's stop there. Thank you, as always, for listening to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast. I'm Fraser McGruer. We've been here with Nick Hare and Peter Coghill of Aleph. Until next time, goodbye.