Social Hacking

  In the last entry (8) I talked about how the human mind always tries to predict all situations. Even if we not always realize this it does happen as part of our will to survive. This preemptive judgment is often done by our subconscious. We don't realize that we have done the judgment we can't really tell if its right or wrong. I will talk more about how our subconscious mind affects us in my next post (hopefully). This technique however, can be used as a very effective way to persuade someone and it is widely used (a little bit to often actually).

  Can you think of any situations where you have let your subconsciousness affect your decision making? Read the question once again. Does it really make sense? I don't have a thesaurus with me but the question is the opposite of a tautology. Yes, I had to use a big word for once. A tautology is a statement or question that is always answered with true or yes. So the opposite: the only possible answer is no. Why? Well since it's your subconscious, you don't really know that it helped you make the decision. Fun side note, but lets keep moving.

  What I wanted to get to is that you are constantly affected. The most obvious example is when going to the supermarket or the mall. Do you think that almost all prices end with 99 cents because it looks good? No, it's to trick you. You might not know it but naturally your brain thinks $4.99 is a lot less then $5.00 (more than a single cent according to your mind).

  I believe it has something to do with our sense of counting. Even infants, who can't speak yet, have the ability to count. There has been multiple studies made on this subject and they all show the same thing, infants can count before they even can walk or talk. I will go on out on a tangent now to tell you how these studies are executed. You put an infant so it can see a empty surface. Then you show the infant that you put between three and seven objects (I believe it was up to seven) on the table. Then you cover the objects with a screen so the baby can't see them. If you secretly remove one of the objects the baby will react in some way to the fact that one object is mysteriously missing. However, if all objects are still on the table the babies expression will be more or less unchanged.

  So the point I wanted to make, about how we think that $5.00 is so much more than $4.99, was that we can subconsciously count very effectively with small numbers. Small numbers is an important part here and the decimal point helps us to make the numbers smaller. Our subconscious mind compares 4 with 5 and the difference is quite large in that case.

  One more example of something that our brain automagically interpenetrates for us: Say that you want your salary as often as possible so your boss gives you some options. Either you get your salary once a month, 12 times a year, about once every 4 weeks, or once every 30 days. Yes, it's stupid when you see these alternatives in a row, however, the alternatives do look different if presented by themselves.

  What I have tried to do with the first 8 posts is to present some basics on the subject social hacking. I want to show you a new side of how the human mind might work and hopefully give you a better understanding of it. I want you to look at ordinary events in everyday life and see new things and find reasons and consequences for what is happening. Why do humans act they way they do?

  What follows after this has nothing to do with the subject Social Hacking. This post only summarizes my thoughts and ideas for the past and future of this blog.

  I have had this blog running for about 3 weeks now, and I have made 8 posts. So I thought it was time to summarize this first time and also look forward.

  If you have visited this blog earlier you will notice that I have made some design changes. I have put more space in my entries and divided them into shorter paragraphs. I hope this will ease the reading process. If you have any suggestions for further improvements please tell me. I usually don't bite.

  For the content of the blog it has changed from my initial though. It has developed into a much wider subject and with the first 8 posts I have barley scratched the surface of what I want to write about. Even in the subjects I have talked about I have only mentioned the basics. My plan is to keep covering basics in different areas and then upon requests or my own will I will cover some topics more carefully. As you might notice I have removed the ”Lesson” from every post heading since I have been writing more and more about observations. I am more then happy to get request so if you want to read anything special please tell me.

  My goal with this blog is still the same. I want to share my thought and ideas with you. Hopefully I will give you, the reader, a new view of things and maybe even teach you something. What I also like is to get some feedback, I want to hear what you think, even if you think that everything I say is wrong.

  Someone suggested to me that I should hold a lecture on the subject social hacking. I have been thinking a little about it and it would defiantly be something that I would enjoy. So if anyone by any chance is in need of a guest lecturer, or something like that, send me a message.

  In all situations we humans face we have an idea what will happen next. At times we can have a couple of different ideas of what is going to happen next but most often when we do something our mind is set to one thing that we think is going to occur. This is part of basic human survival. If we wake the sleeping tiger it is probably going to eat us. As humans we can't (at least from what I have seen) get rid of these expectations. They will always be there and as a social hacker we need to take these into consideration. This is a subject that I will return to in many cases because it is such an important and unavoidable human feature. This time I am just going to stroll through some basics.

  I will start with a ridiculous example, just to give you somewhat of an idea of what I am talking about. Say that you are in front of your computer at home. You use your mouse and click (double-click maybe) on one of the folders. What do you expect will happen next? Well in this case there a few possible outcomes. Either the folder opens up and revels it contents, or the folder is selected. Ok, that is what we do expect, however, what if the folder next to it opened instead? Nothing says that it would be wrong but it's certainly not what you would expect.

  For a little more interesting example I will mention my iRiver mp3 player. On the top of it there are two volume buttons, one to increase the volume and one to decrease it. These two buttons are located on the top of the player next to each other. One is to the right, and the other to the left. Imagine yourself holding the mp3 player in your hand (If you have a weak imagination here is a picture for you). Which button do you think will increase the volume? Everyone I have asked so far has said the right button. So why is that? Well we have already made up our mind before we even saw the mp3 player. If you look at your stereo's volume dial or that of any remote control, to increase the volume you go from left to right. However, in this case it is actually the left button the increases to volume, and it is still confusing to me.

  Another place where you expect things to be a certain way is in the bathroom. Look at the sink. Hot water is always to the left and cold water to the right. This is something very important thing for designers or even software developers. A designer needs to have a brilliant idea to change something like the layout of hot and cold water. We all have a amazingly short attention span and if things don't happen as we expect them to, we will probably try something else.

  So how can this be used? As I mentioned when I talked about public speaking (lesson 4); first impressions are important. If you dress like a well educated person (how do they dress?) people are in most cases going to assume that you are smart. Same thing with food. If you a cooking a meal for a special someone it is important to appeal to this someone's other senses. If the meal looks and smells delicious the person will also think that it is delicious before he or she even tasted it.

  I also want to mention some humor when talking about this subject. Playing with people's expectations can be fun. I'll try to give you a example little joke (no, I don't expect anyone to think this is funny): Two guys are hanging out talking with each other. One of them starts to tell a story: “I was out walking the other day and I saw this homeless guy begging for change. So I put my hand in my pocket and grabbed a nickel and threw it to the guy. Just as the nickel hit the bottom of his cup a bus drove straight into building next to us and people around us started to scream. Out of the bus came Chuck Norris carrying a dolphin on his shoulder and singing “I love rock n' roll”. Chuck jumped up into the air and flew away like superman. At the same time ambulances and fire trucks started to show up, but they could not do anything since an alien spaceship had already beamed the bus onto their ship. I was so scared so I just ran straight home and hid under my bed.”
Upon which the other guy replies: “You only gave the homeless guy five cents?”

I am going away for a few days. I will be without computer and/or internet access so there won't be any updates. However, I will be back on thrusday so expect some updates shortly after that.

  So far I have mostly talked about how to understand your own mind and the minds of people around you. This post will focus on improving your mind and how you can improve your own memory. Many people say that they can never remember anything and hopefully we can change that. There are ways to effectively improve your memory. I will present some of the things that I have discovered.

  Remembering things can be done in a number of different ways. I have already talked about creating paths (lesson 3) which is a really effective way of remembering something for a long time. However, you might not always have the time to create these paths. Yes, it would be much simpler if you just remembered everything without spending more energy on it. Well, I can't promise you that you will remember everything, but at least I have seen some improvement in my own memory with some simple exercises.

  I do a lot of commuting (I am currently on a train between Västerås and Stockholm), so I am going to give you a couple of exercises to do on the road. The first one is remembering names. I can't tell you how bad I am at remembering names. However, I have at least made some improvements. What you do is this; Look at the people around you. Do you know anyones name? Well, if you can't get their name (lesson 2 gives you some idea of how to get names without even interacting with anyone), start naming them. I know that the person sitting next to me is Gabriell, since his mother (I don't know for sure if it was his mother) asked me if the seat next to me was taken. I said no and she called him over. Two girls are sitting on the other side of the aisle. I know that the girl sitting to the left is Frida (cellphone talker) but I don't know the name of the girl to the right so I am going to call her Klara. So that is three names. Then I will just keep giving people names and practice to remember their names. Practices does help with memory and it also might give you something against boredom.

  The second thing you can do is remembering a picture. Look at something for a couple of seconds. This can be a advertisement, a book cover, or even a person. Then look away and try to rebuild the picture in your mind. Say that you where looking at a person. Try to recall what he or she was wearing. The important thing here is to recall every little detail. Was he or she wearing a ring? How long and what color was his or her hair? Was there anything in the hair? What did his or her face look like? Keep asking yourself questions like these and then after maybe 5 minutes take a look at the person again and see how accurate your picture of the person was.

  Next I am going to tell you about two exercises that you need a deck of cards to do. They are simple but require a lot of practice to master. The first one is about sorting the cards. Take the first card in the deck, look at it and place it face down on the table. Do the same thing with the next card and so on. When you come to a card with the same face values as one that is already on your table, put it in the same pile. When you are done you should have 13 piles with 4 cards in every pile. A thing to mention here is that you can't sort the cards on the table, meaning that when you get a card you have not seen before you have to place it next to a already existing pile. The challenge of the game is remembering where you put the cards.

  The last exercise this time goes like this: you shuffle your deck and remove one card. Don't look at the card you removed. Then go through the 51 cards that are left, looking at every card only once. Then you try to say what card that was not in the deck. To be able to do this you need to structure the cards in your head. I have been able to do this a few times, but I won't tell you (right now at least) how I structure the cards, I think its better if you come up with your own way. If you master this it is also a great party trick.

  That was 4 exercises to start with, I will probably mention more further down the road and you can probably think of some exercises yourself. A little note along the way; Remember to have as much fun as possible. However, be careful not to stare too much at others that you are traveling with or they might get uncomfortable and think that you are weird (last one might be true in my case?).