The Annoying Few
We can all think of situations where a small minority is seen to be ruining it for the rest of us. Whether it’s someone littering or people talking loudly in a cinema, there seem to be endless examples of a small number of people creating a disproportionately large imposition on others. But what can we put this effect down to and what should we do about it?
In this week’s episode, we discuss the annoying few. We unpack the Pareto principle, personality types and analyse rates of crime in New York. We explore why phenomena we tend to think of as evenly distributed turn out to be highly concentrated and finally, we share moments when we were part of the annoying minority ourselves
A few things we mentioned in this podcast:
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Transcript
Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by me, Fraser McGrure, 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 here with Peter Coghill and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights and this week we're discussing the annoying minority. Nick, you seem like a good candidate to talk about this to kick us off. Off you go.
Speaker B:I read an interesting report a couple of weeks ago which says this, nearly a third of all shoplifting arrests in New York City last year involved just 327 people, the police said. Collectively they were arrested and re-arrested more than 6,000 times.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker B:That's about 30 shoplifts per person.
Speaker A:Versus a population of about 10 million or so.
Speaker B:And these are the people who were arrested, right, we don't really know about the people who weren't. But I mean, so it occurred to me that this seems to be quite a prevalent issue, like a small number of people creating a large number of problem. So I'll give you some examples of things like this, right. So I think antisocial behaviour in general, right, we're talking about, not just crime but just in general, you know, antisocial people, all it takes is one of them to ruin a whole bunch of, an entire bus worth of people's day, you know, someone listening to their music out loud on the bus. Spoils your whole day, doesn't it? Well, it does. Or one person pushing in a queue ruins it for everyone else in that queue, for example. Vandalism. You vandalise one bus stop and that's a bus stop ruined for that. And it just feels to me like there's quite a lot of, everywhere you look it's often like the problems are highly concentrated in a few people.
Speaker C:Yeah, there's an asymmetry to it.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm sure we'll get on to this, but is there an asymmetry in the opposite direction? But anyway, keep going.
Speaker B:Well, you mean, is a lot of goodness produced by a few people?
Speaker A:Yeah, but for some reason we don't notice it. But anyway, keep going.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's a good question. So a lot of people, especially in the business world, will tell you about the Pareto principle, which is actually originally, apparently, I really haven't, I haven't, this is the story, is that Pareto, who was quite a famous economist in the 19th century, discovered that 20% of the pea pods that he was growing were responsible for 80% of the peas that he grew, which is a bit like your example of a small number of people doing all the work. Now, this has been applied obviously to business a lot, but someone in, more relevantly to this question, a guy called Joseph Duran.
Speaker A:Sorry, it should be the Pareto principle. It's Pareto, it's the Pareto thing.
Speaker B:Yeah, except for his name is Pareto, Vilfredo Pareto.
Speaker A:So it should be the P-E-R-E-T-O.
Speaker B:What?
Speaker A:I'm sorry, terrible pun.
Speaker B:Oh, it's a pun. I think he's trying to make a joke, sir. Well, thanks for telling us. So we'll, you know, oh, brilliant. Oh, is it, did you say P-E-R-E-T-O? P-E-R-E-T-O. Oh, P-E-R-E-T-O, right. I don't know if we want to keep that in, but I think we should.
Speaker A:By the way, it's whenever I serve peas at home, my children already start growing before we start, because I always say, I always say, Lewis, just, you know, give them a chance. Give, yeah, yeah.
Speaker B: , there's Joseph Duran in the: Speaker A:And that's even a selective pool, because you're talking about people who use the services, I guess
Speaker B:everyone, I don't know, but that's interesting. I'm not saying there's anything bad about people using the healthcare system, but it's another example of that kind of phenomenon. It's astonishing, isn't it? Yeah. So the question is, am I right? Am I exaggerating this effect? Or is it true actually, that a small number of people are responsible for most of the problems in the world? And if I am right, what's to be done about it? Should we shove them into a giant mincer? That's question one. So, well, you know, other options include just sending them to an island. We did that. It's called New Zealand. But it didn't fix the problem. Well, yeah. So yeah, that's the question, really. Is it true? And if so, which I think it is,
Speaker A:what do we do about it? Well, we need someone to address this in a dispassionate manner. So therefore, I call on our resident misanthrope,
Speaker B:Peter. He would just put everyone in a giant sausage mincer.
Speaker C: So I looked at the stats for: Speaker B:respect. Like they don't really moderate their comment section. It's kind of self-moderating.
Speaker C:But in this regard, it was quite conservative, because lots of people sort of jumping on liberals and saying it's all their fault. But anyway. So one commenter made quite a good point. They sort of paraphrased, they said that it seems likely that these people are some, are plugged into some larger network receiving and reselling these stolen goods. Okay, so that got me thinking, well, actually, yeah, you're right. It's their job. So it's their job, right. They're specialised in doing that. So I figured, well, if you could distribute, like inverted commas, more fairly, the blame for shoplifting, it's also the people who are happy to buy stolen goods because they're cheaper. Yeah. And they know where it's come from. They know it's probably dodgy. Or if you could, in some way, prove, if you could in some way make it unsellable, make stolen goods unsellable, so everything's got a serial number, everything's registered. However, don't use cash anymore, it's all cryptocurrency or some other kind of registered cash. You could make it impossible for crime to occur. Then that wouldn't be a problem. So basically, I think it's their specialism. They're not solely responsible. There's a sort of fallacy going on here that you're assuming that they are stealing for their own direct benefits. They're stealing a thing because they want the thing, but actually they're not. They're stealing a thing as a job, generic cash for buying whatever it is they want to buy. So if you attribute blame on all the blame on them, then you're reading it. We're getting a disproportionate sort of blame scale. There's a sort of fallacy going on. It's actually the people who are willing to buy the stolen goods. So that, I think, also makes it unremarkable. You know what? Yes, it's a good point.
Speaker A:They should be applauded as risk takers out there at the coalface of the...
Speaker C:Well, you know what? To me, they're miners. They're mining some resource to sell on a market for money, right? So that was the job that came to mind when I started to think about it.
Speaker B:You know what it is a bit like? I think it's a bit like saying that how much of your body is your hand? What is it? I don't know. Let's say it's three percent. Yeah, I was going to say three percent. Right. So it's like saying, oh, did you know that only three percent of people's bodies are responsible for shoplifting? No, because actually it's the whole thing. It's not just the hand, it's everything else. And I guess these people are the hands of the whole network of things that, yeah.
Speaker A:We need to come back to Peter, but just before we do, because I think in this example that we've led with, I think it's pretty convincing or persuasive what we're talking about. It reminds you of the film City of God, that Brazilian film set in favelas and violence and gangsters and so on. At the end of that on the DVD, they have an interview, an actual documentary interview with the chief of police of Rio de Janeiro. And one of the things he's saying is actually we all participate in this corruption and so on. And these nice middle class people, when we pay off police, we moan about corruption and violence in Rio, he says, but actually we all participate in it directly or not. Anyway, Peter, you go on wherever you were going to go. Keep going.
Speaker C:And so other things that make it unremarkable, I mean, it's a thing. I think it's not acknowledging as a thing, but something that makes it sort of feel more unremarkable to me is that it feels like some sort of tragedy of the commons. So like, let's say the well-behavedness, like the sort of cooperative well-behavedness is a sort of limited resource. So imagine in the cinema or in the theatre, the sort of the shutting up, sitting still and paying attention thing that everyone must do in order for everyone to maximise their enjoyment of the situation. Assuming that if everyone did that, the overall benefit would be the highest. Then that's a sort of commons, right? So it's very easy for somebody to overgraze that, a small number of people to overgraze that. So it's easy because what you are trying to achieve is effortful for a small number of people, for it to be used up disproportionately by a small number of people. So it's, which put in mind for me, it's probably an entropy thing. I think it's like imagining a broken window. Why don't broken windows just sort of spontaneously unbreak? Why is that a one-way operation? Why can't it only happen one way? And I think by and large, I mean, it's because there are many more ways that window can be broken than it can be fixed. There's only one way a window can be complete. Whereas there's many, many, many, many more arrangements of molecules of glass, which means it's broken.
Speaker B:There is definitely a question about what kinds of things are vulnerable to this. But I mean, let's just, and I think that definitely Peter's right about this concept of there being a commons of some kind. I'll get onto that in a minute because I think there has to be an externality involved. But it's just thinking about this. So, and I think the example of the choplifting is quite interesting. Like actually, what we're seeing is a visible concentration of crime in 300, say, people. But what we're not seeing is in fact, that crime is much more spread out. It looks like it's all concentrated, but because so many other people are participating by taking part in the economy for stolen goods. Actually, it's not true. That concentration is illusory. So, yeah, I was just going to say, not everything is like a window, though. Not everything can be broken in a way that basically, once it's done, everything's ruined. So, if you think about, I don't know, the state of a, I don't know, noise in a restaurant or something, like each individual person adds a bit to it. It's not like one person can come in and make it intolerably noisy. Each person is adding a bit. I disagree that it is a bit like that. Well, what I'm saying is you can do that in the cinema, that's all. Like one person saying anything in the cinema makes it intolerably noisy. But also, it's not necessarily irretrievably
Speaker A:broken like a window is, or that something's stolen. But go on, Peter. I think it is in
Speaker C:some circumstances. So, as soon as somebody speaks, that gives everybody else permission to speak. Everyone who wants to speak, permission to speak. So, when you're in a cinema, or you've been in a theatre, so a slightly more well-to-do kind of audience, as soon as somebody coughs, loads of motherfuckers cough, don't they? The coughs come in waves, because as soon as someone's coughed, it gives permission. It's broken the seal. It's broken the seal. All I'm seeking to do is
Speaker B:draw a distinction between situations where it's possible for one person really to impose a big cost on everyone, like in the cinema or on the bus, versus a situation where everyone is imposing a small cost. And I feel like in those situations, it's like littering, which I think has changed from something which I perceived that a lot more people were happy to do, in which case it'd be very difficult to look around and say, well, littering is a problem caused by a small minority of people. Because everyone was doing it. Everyone was doing it. It's more socially acceptable. Now it's not. In a way, the impact of littering is higher, because in general, the streets are cleaner. When you see some litter now, it's more remarkable. And so in a way, that small number of people who are left littering are still visibly ruining things for everyone else. So I think a lot of things like this fall into that category. Things like being people who are disruptive in the classroom are, as I understand it, anecdotal evidence that teachers spend an enormous amount of time dealing with a very small number of disruptive kids. And ergo, because the teacher's resources are limited, that's really ruining it for the 19 or 29 other kids in the class. Yeah, this is true. And I was a teacher and this is exactly the case. But another question is whether it's the same people, and I strongly think it is. Who litter and steal. I bet it is. There's a question. There's a good one, right? Yeah. So I suspect that's true.
Speaker C:We're now delving into the comment section.
Speaker B:No, but I bet it's true. I just bet it's true. Like the kid who was the most disruptive kid at my school ended up getting convicted of assault, for example. So, you know, there you go. That's all the evidence you need. But look, I did try to look at some crime stats to try and work out, OK, how many people are causing...
Speaker A:Sorry, Nick, I definitely want to hear from you. But just to check where we are in things, because at the moment we're trying to establish, is this a thing? And it looks like, it feels to me like it probably is, but it's also pretty complex and more complex than one might imagine, which is interesting. Just because, for example, in the case of the shoplifters, well, it's more spread out, disputed than we would expect. And also in the example of littering, I think it's a good example that it's actually there used to be more, but it wasn't an issue. It wasn't annoying because everyone was doing it, but now it is. So it's not as simple as one might imagine. Where are we going? What are you going to take us into, Nick?
Speaker B:Oh, well, actually, if we can just... So just to visualise then what we're trying to claim about a certain situation is that if you plot the amount of cost, say, but it could be benefit, but if you plot the amount of cost that each person has imposed on a scale from left to right, and you order them, so the most costly people are at one end, in a kind of fairer system or a system where the cost is distributed, you would expect that to be a fairly gentle slope. Some people might be more costly than others. So just visualise that like a flat line. Everyone's imposing the same amount of costs on everyone else. And I think there are some systems, what we're saying is there are at least some systems where that cost is hugely concentrated at the upper end. So a small number of people, the one cinema goer out of 100 who wants to get their phone out and start listening to music in the cinema, they're imposing all the cost. Nobody else is imposing any cost on anyone else. That one person is doing all the costs. So in that case, it's a very, very uneven chart with all the costs concentrated at one end. So are there systems like that? And I think the answer is yes, but there may not be as many as we think. So for example, I think that Peter's shoplifting reasoning suggests that what looks like that is actually more spread out than you think. But I mean, you know, the point is that there are definitely systems which are like that. And I think that probably a good question for us will be what enables a system to be like that? What enables a system to let people be excessively costly? Secondly, how can we design systems in such a way that it reduces people's ability to, you know, the annoying minority's ability to do that? And thirdly, when there are systems like that, why aren't we all doing it? What stops us from all listening to music on the bus out loud, or browsing our phones in the cinema? Because like, in a sense, there's a benefit to doing it, right? There's a benefit to you. Yeah, you get what you want. It's nice to listen to my music as loud as I want. Exactly. There's a benefit to you littering, right? Because you don't have to carry your litter with you. It's just life is easier. So, so there you go. Systems where that's possible. Yeah. And then how do you mitigate? How could you prevent it? And then why don't we all
Speaker A:do it? Why don't we all do it? Okay, I've got at least two or three answers. And then you come in, Peter. One, you're overcomplicating this, right? Right. I don't think you do. I'm now able to get a whole handle on it. So yeah. Which is human nature. Oh, no. Lots of people have bloody nightmares. Let's just write it off to human nature. Problem solved. People are dickheads, you know, and they need to be controlled. And you know, their behaviour needs to be modified by others and rules, etc. Yeah. And if you live in a tribe of 100, great. If you live in a society of millions, not so great. Which moves on to two, how do we stop that? Rules, laws. I remember living in a country and going to the cinema was simply not worth going to the cinema, right? Because everyone was just on was just talking and shouting. Where was this? I don't Is it Brazil? No, no, it wasn't actually. Is it Belize? No, Guatemala? No, no, it's nowhere in South Central America. Nowhere there. And if you told these people to be quiet, they would just start shouting at the people who told them to be quiet, right? You know? So whereas that doesn't really happen in a country like Britain, of course, there is, you know, I mean, not to that extent. So it's a cultural thing. What do you need? You need rules, need laws, stuff like that. And what was the third one? Why don't we all do it? Well, yeah, I mean, wouldn't it be great? But I guess because of societal pressure and these kind of laws that we've talked about, that people don't. Why don't we go out and, you know, murder our neighbour? Because, you know, they're upsetting us. And well, we just, it's not nice. You don't do that? Not usually. Oh, okay. It must be a Lincolnshire thing. Yeah, I reckon. In Haringey, we all do that. Yeah,
Speaker B:let me add a bit of structure then. Well, if you want. Although I think Fraser actually did have some insights in there. And some structure. I said one, two and three. Yeah, you did. Yeah. Thank
Speaker C:you. I apologise. So I also have three. So I've got three criteria by which you can spot a system that might be vulnerable to this. Go for it. This is totally ignoring everything I just said.
Speaker A:But anyway, keep going. Go on. Yeah, it is. First criteria. We'll fit them together. You're the
Speaker C:host. So fragility. And what we mean by fragility is like how easy it is to cause the disruption. The window. Yeah. Is it a window type system? Is it a window type system? So is it little effort or negative effort to cause the problem? So dropping it is negative effort. Pulling your phone out is little effort. And overall, like the silence in the cinema, it's fragile because it's harder. It takes effort to maintain the silence whereas it takes less effort to break the silence. Right. So fragility. Concentration. And what I mean by concentration is the more people involved in maintaining that goodness, the more concentrated it is. So a bigger cinema with more people is going to be harder to keep quiet than a small group of people looking at a screen. Right. So concentration and then weak control. Things with weak controls. Weak controls. What I mean by weak controls is not having your laws and rules. So if you expect people to maintain their silence, not pull their phones out based on some sort of woolly, unspecified norm, then that's a weak control. Versus if you if you shot people who pull their phones out,
Speaker A:that would be a strong control. This feels a little we're getting close to our cake eating systems at workplaces. And yeah, isn't it? Right. Yeah. I haven't. There might
Speaker C:be other ones. That's just what I could come up with in 20 seconds. Okay. But but but but I mean,
Speaker B:well, I'll add to that because I think those sound totally plausible to me. But just in terms of the kinds of things for which it's possible to kind of impose a cost on other people yourself, without their permission, it we're talking about things where there's an externality, which means where it's possible for you to, for you to create a cost and impose it on other people easily, which generally are systems where that is a kind of non non excludable sort of thing that you're producing. So in other words, if you make noise, it's very hard for me to block out your noise. I just, you know, if you're making if you're noisy, maybe you're exporting noise to me, and I don't have the choice not to have it exported to me. Right. So I'm just saying that that's, that's what you were, it's going to be things like noise, stuff where you're, if you like omitting something omitting nuisance, which other people can't choose not to experience. And actually shoplifting doesn't really fit into that category. I think antisocial behaviour does. But murder doesn't. Like, if you murder someone next door, I don't really suffer from that. It's not annoying.
Speaker A:It's not. It's something else. Yeah. Well, I'm not saying it's a good thing.
Speaker C:Your house price would be affected.
Speaker A:Well, there is, there are externalities everywhere. So there is an effect, but we don't necessarily experience it directly because shoplifting lifts prices for us all, right? That's really what it does. But we don't get irritated by that in quite the same way. Guys, I mean, we need to actually kind of wrap this up.
Speaker B:Well, actually, I just was prompted to have another thought as well. It was sort of tying in some of the stuff that Peter said with the thought about littering and how littering has got, you know, it's got more socially unacceptable in the last 20 years. It just occurs to me that if you are going to set about stamping something out, you're actually going to make this problem worse because the people who are easiest to stop are the ones who probably do it less. Yeah. Right. So let's say you've got people who routinely drop a thousand pieces of litter a day and there's a gentle slope down to the people who only drop one piece of litter a day. So it's not hugely concentrated. And then we go about stamping out littering. Well, it's all going to be the people who are not littering very much, who are going to find it easier to stop altogether until eventually you'll find that the people who are doing all the littering are doing a vastly disproportionate amount of it because you've eaten into the people who were less problematic to begin with. So I just, yeah, I sort of feel like there's a necessary, even if like...
Speaker A:Even if that top lot dropped by their littering by 80 percent, for example, they're still going to be by far in the majority of the cases of littering.
Speaker B:Yeah. So in a sense, like actually, as you stamp things out, stamp this kind of thing out, you're going to be concentrating the problem harder at the upper end. So, yeah, I just I wonder if, you know, that's just it's a necessary evil, if you like. It's a necessary outcome from any attempts to. Yeah. I mean, so, for example, if let's say that you were in this country where everyone talks and shouts at the cinema and because you were a normal person, you thought, you know, we should do something about this. And so you bring in a kind of scheme to do that. Well, you eventually eventually you'll get you'll be like the UK where actually instead of being an everyone problem, suddenly it's turned into a this is a small number of nuisance makers problem.
Speaker A:And actually, yeah, in that country, if you do do that, because that wasn't the only kind of behavior where that sort of happens, the only sort of location, any time where you did sort of have a go at people about whether it be that or something else, like driving like a maniac. Yeah, actually, you're you are perceived as being extremely rude. And that's just really how I think the listeners are going to be riveted to know what country it is. And they'll never know. Yeah, no. Well, right. We need to stop. I've got all sorts of things I want to ask.
Speaker B:Well, OK, but I mean, no, it's just that I was trying I was looking at what is it if it's true that that making a nuisance is is a small number of people thing. This is more on the kind of why don't we all do it? A question. Personality types. Right. Trying to find out what kinds of people commit antisocial behavior. And apparently that there is quite a good correlation. So so here are some things that antisocial people have. They're self-centered. They tend to be hostile. They have poor impulse control and a more aggressive and a more sensation seeking now sometimes gets wrapped up by saying they've got high neuroticism and higher psychoticism. So neuroticism is a tendency to quick arousal and psychoticism is sort of impulsivity and sensation seeking, which makes sense to me. Right. Yeah. Because it's it's probably makes it hard, harder to deter people like that who are very strongly motivated by things like, oh, this this bit of rubbish is really annoying me. I've got to drop it, you know, and less likely to, you know, with calmness and equanimity, find their way to a to a bin.
Speaker A:It means also state. Yeah. It also means that if you're one with nature. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you're a normal person, then one, you would recognize that the guy or girl who's talking loudly and aggressively in a cinema is actually not only are they the type of person to do that. They're exactly the kind of person you don't want to challenge on this sort of right. Right. And three, conversely, or inversely, I don't know which it also means that the kind of people who don't make that kind of scene are exactly the sort of people who won't challenge anyway. Do you see what I mean? Yeah. So it's kind of it's reinforced on both sides. Yeah. Yeah, it's true. We're in
Speaker B:a conspiracy of silence. Yeah. Against the annoying minority, reasonable middle class. Yeah. Stuck in the cinema. Well, no, that's absolutely self-manical. It's the paradox of being reasonable is that you actually, you were less likely to want to, you know, do things about it. Yeah. Yeah. So all the people with the tools to deal with this problem are the same people who
Speaker A:are the problem. Yeah. What a nightmare. Yeah. So you need a kind of vigilante, something like that. Anyway, well, it's funny you should say that because maybe this moves us on to our question.
Speaker B:Well, have you heard of the cart narcs? No, I've not. I discovered this last, I think, yeah, a few weeks ago. It's a guy who bills himself as the cart narcs. And I think he started as a kind of. I don't know what he does, but I like the sound of this guy already. I think he started as a segment in some other programme. But anyway, he's got a YouTube channel and he basically goes around finding people who leave their shopping trolley in just lying in the car park instead of taking it back to the trolley return spot. And he doorsteps them and says, oh, excuse me, I'm the cart narcs, you've left your trolley here. And because they have always one of like three excuses, you know, he has prepared replies for all of that. But he is that guy. He's confrontational. He's actually very charming and funny. It sounds he's disarmingly nice when he goes and approaches them. I think that's what we need more of. I think we need more cart narcs. I am a cart narc. And I'll
Speaker A:give you an example. Last year for my summer holiday, I was in northern Italy and I went to Verona where they've got a beautiful Roman amphitheatre sort of thing where they perform opera every night in the summer. Beautiful. There you are. So the the dusk, the sort of quite balmy evening and Nessun Dorma is coming out. And that is the one that I saw. I've forgotten the name of that particular opera, but it's that one, which, by the way, that's about the only good bit in it. Right. But but anyway, the night was being ruined for me because I was because I don't have much money. I was way up in the gods kind of thing. And there was this German family over there and they just wouldn't stop bloody talking. Yeah. And the reason why and to be fair to them, they were just trying to explain things to their to their teenage daughter what was happening. Right. But they just kept talking. And also I was drinking quite a lot. Right. And so that sort of reduced that sort of middle class sort of, you know, the reserve that we talked about. You were feeling
Speaker B:uninhibited. I was feeling uninhibited. You know what, question, if they'd been Italian, would you have confronted them? Yes, definitely. Really? I definitely would. I feel like they'd be on home turf then. And you might think, oh, that's obviously an Italian thing to talk your way through an opera. Like operas are just so familiar to Italians that they just go there
Speaker A:and have a chat. That question will forever hang there without necessarily having a definitive answer. But anyway, so I was so angry about this and my wife was getting worried because, you know, she knows what I'm like when I kick off. And when my son said to me, Daddy, if you're that angry, it'll make you feel better if you can talk to them. And I said, oh, that's very perceptive. Yeah. Yeah. And so I went over and actually really nicely, really charmingly. And I said, I'm so sorry. But just to let you know, I'm trying to I can't really enjoy this because I can hear you talking a lot of the time. Could I ask if you would? I'm so sorry, but would you mind stopping talking so much? And they were apologised profusely because, like I say, all they were trying to do was explain things to their daughter and so on. And they stopped. OK, wow. Brilliant. But then then three. What's the one after Millennials?
Speaker B:I always forget. Which after you'd be like Generation Z. Yeah. Zoomers. Zoomers. There
Speaker A:you go. Behind me. Young people. Youngsters were behind me and they wouldn't stop talking. But by which time I was on a roll. And so and so I just turned around. I said I said, hey, are you enjoying this? And they said, yeah, no, we're really enjoying it. I said, great, because there's a brilliant bit coming up. It's the biggest moment in this opera. It's Ness and Dom. I can't wait for it. I only hope that you stop talking so that I can enjoy it. Would that be OK? And they were just so what's the word? Mortified. Mortified. Good. Embarrassed. Were they English? They were Irish. And they just sort of just just they didn't they actually couldn't even speak. Oh, good. They just sort of mutely nodded. The good thing about zoomers is they're
Speaker B:all socially anxious. So if you do interfere into their. Yeah, they they they I think they experience a lot of shame. Yes. And you can exploit that. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah.
Speaker A:Apparently my kids told me that afterwards they kept pointing at me and laughing, but that's OK. I don't mind that because they shut up. They were quiet. Yeah. You're a thick skin generation X guy. I don't care about that kind of thing. Yeah. Anyway. Well done. You're the the op cops. The op cops. That's me. That's me. I digress. I took up way too much time there. Are we ready to go to questions or any any more points? So I've got one one more question
Speaker C:building on your classroom of disruptive children and desire to sort of if you could assuming it would be possible to exclude the most disruptive event in any system, if you could just put them on a boat, as we said earlier. Yeah, that's probably pretty infeasible. But imagine you could. I think what would happen is that your your your your sort of level of expectation of well-behavedness would just would just increase. And so you find the next tranche of people just as annoying. Assuming we've got some sort of inverse power law kind of curve. The next bunch of people are the next bunch of people go on the boat. And you'd end up with you alone. So I've already taken this to the limit. And that's why. So when when they came
Speaker B:for the people who get their phones out in the cinema, I didn't speak up. Yeah, because I was not a person who gets their phone out of the cinema. Yeah. But when when they came for the people who have a conversation on the bus, there was no one left to speak up for me.
Speaker A:But also, ironically, you then put yourself on an island, right? Yeah. Of awful people.
Speaker C:That is my dream of being on my own island. Yeah. Everyone's happy. Yeah. Right.
Speaker A:Okay. Before we stop, one question. Maybe we should deport the people who care so much. Yeah. So here's the question. When have you or when are you that costly person? When are you
Speaker B:that annoying person? I did it once in a plane once. I still feel bad about this. But yeah, I was I was flying back from work trip to Washington, probably about 15, 20 years ago. And I it was in the good old days before the, you know, austerity airlines where you can just get water, where you could just get free booze. So I'd had I'd had a few ales and I was chatting to this guy next to me. He was also a little bit, you know, three sheets to the wind. And we were having a good old chatter about all sorts of things. I shut up because I know what you're like and films. And he was a nice guy. Was he British or American? I think he was British as well. And then the person in front of me stood up and said, excuse me, which really would you mind sort of, you know, it's and I realized that all the lights were off except for us two. And everyone else in the plane was trying to go to sleep. But it was basically just braying away. Yeah. I was that guy. I was the annoying braying North London guy. Yeah. So yeah, I hate myself for that.
Speaker A:Yeah, quite right. But you're like that when we go out now, Nick, when we go out, you're always the loudest guy in the restaurant or the pub or, you know, venting forth and yeah.
Speaker B:And I feel like this is like a hands away the baddies moment for being an annoying guy in public. Yeah. Gosh, I thought my kids said that to me because everyone gets embarrassed by their dad. But no, it turns out. Okay. Right. Yeah. It's useful to know. Yeah. Knowing is half the battle. Yeah. Know thyself. Peter?
Speaker C:The only example I can think of is Yeah, there can only be sure. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I go through life minimising my impact on everybody else. Oh, right. No, but Are you sure? Yeah. But one example. Thank God for that. Let me put it another way. The example that springs first to mind is that the impact was probably pretty localised, but it was also on an aeroplane. So I sat down in my, we all boarded. I sat down in my seat. And when I sat down, the seat behind me was vacant. So I thought, I'll put my seat back. Lovely. I can put my seat back. Little did I know that somebody had sort of somehow very quietly squeezed into that seat at some point during the flight after I sat down. Okay. And so we spent probably multiple hours with a reclined seat in front of them. And then everybody knows you mustn't recline your seat in an aeroplane.
Speaker B:Yeah, this is something I didn't. I guess it's not true. Yeah. I disagree with it. Unless the guy at the very It's there for a reason.
Speaker C:It's for, it's a podcast. Anyway, the point is that I, had I known, I'm a non-seat recliner in aeroplanes. This was an exception because I thought the seat was vacant. And had he asked, I would have put my seat back.
Speaker B:Blimey, the only antisocial thing Peter's ever done is recline his seat on an aeroplane. He's quite saintly, isn't he? Inadvertently, by the way, not really.
Speaker C:Yeah. And the only other thing I've done is have no insight into my own behaviour. I've done everything else I've done wrong.
Speaker A:Yeah. I'm generally lovely to be around. As you know this, I didn't need to tell you that. Okay. Well, it's useful to know. Yeah. And Lucky you pointed it out. Yes. Yeah. But I just remember once at university, my tutor was just absolutely exasperated with me. She was saying, the thing is Fraser, you don't turn up to your tutorials. You, you're late. You have to redo stuff. One tutor at one place gives up with you. We have to get another one for you. You do realise that when we have to arrange all these extra stuff, we have to pay for it. Okay. And she said, and it made me realise at that moment, oh, actually, so the worst student costs more, costs the most. Yeah. So it's exactly that example you gave earlier on. You were that guy. I am that guy. I was that guy. And I am that guy. And then sure enough, I ended up getting, I was the worst student in my year. Excellent. Because it's all there to see in black and white. I was the worst. And I know I'm the worst because I was the only one to get a third. Everyone else got there.
Speaker C:Not a first with honours, but a third with disgrace. Yeah. And yeah, exactly. And I kind of like that. Done just enough not to get defenestrated.
Speaker B:Yeah. He's making a virtue out of it. But we, I mean, that's like the person in the cinema saying, look, you know, you can listen. I've got good taste in music. You guys are all enjoying my music for free. Stop complaining about it.
Speaker A:That's me. And on that note, thank you as always for listening to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast. I'm Fraser McGruer. We've been here with Peter Coghill and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights. Until next time. Goodbye.
