What I had for breakfast

I vividly recall a conversation with a friend back when I first got into the radio broadcasting business. "I can't stand listening to those DJs anymore" he said. "I couldn't care less what the guy had for breakfast, I just want to hear music."

A few weeks ago, I had a quasi-flashback when conversing with someone about social networking, to which he responded "I can't stand all this garbage on Twitter and Facebook. I couldn't care less what someone had for breakfast..."

Two comments, several decades apart, about two entirely different mediums, conveying the same sentiment.

In the decades I spent in the radio business, I encountered countless similar negative comments towards on-air hosts from friends, radio station listeners, and countless research/focus groups. Yet one of radio's most endearing qualities can be the on-air personalities, when they truly connect with the listener and enable a radio station to transcend the role of jukebox.

Having said that, I would also agree, that for many, many reasons (more than enough to fill a year's worth of blogs), much, if not most of the spoken word content on radio, is absolute drivel that fails to connect with anyone.

Similarly, in the world of social networking, there is compelling content and then there is everything else.

I have always likened it to the sound made by adults in Peanuts cartoons. Most of what we read and hear is little more than the communication equivalent of white noise. But to dismiss an entire medium because some or even most of its content is not relevant or of low perceived value is to throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater.

Besides, a truly great communicator should be able to knock your socks off recalling what she had for breakfast!

EVERYTHING THAT CAN BE INVENTED HAS BEEN INVENTED: THE FACTS ACCORDING TO SPINAL TAP!

During the closing credits of 1984's This Is Spinal Tap, front man David St. Hubbins proudly exclaims "I believe virtually everything I read, and I think that is what makes me more of a selective human than someone who doesn't believe anything. "

I couldn't help but think of this quote while recently investigating a number of internet false-facts in the process of researching a presentation. I was specifically intrigued by misinformation which, despite having been disproven countless times, continues to circulate as fact.

Here's one of my favourites:

"Everything that can be invented, has been invented."

This quote is most often attributed to Charles Duell, Commissioner of the U.S. Patent Office in 1899.

However, neither Charles Duell, nor anyone else connected with the U.S. patent office, ever said anything of this nature. In fact, in 1899 Duell appeared before the U.S. Congress and brazenly announced that the future of American success depended on invention.

And yet this completely false quote continues to appear on thousands of web sites, in myriad powerpoint presentations, and in countless conversations, to support various theses, as an example of a boneheaded comment of historical magnitude. Why?

It would be easy to explain this as laziness; a lack or desire or effort to properly research a topic. But there's much more to it than that.

Consider this - not that many years ago, doing any form of research generally required a physical trip to a library. There, someone in a hurry, could head straight for the encyclopaedia section, open a Britannica, and hope to find what they needed.

Suffice it to say, with the advent of the internet, research trips to the library have all but disappeared, as a quick Google search for Dumb Quotes, for instance, can instantly yield over 4 million hits. And while Encyclopaedia Britannica employs dozens of editors and thousands of fact checkers (and was still accused in early editions of getting facts wrong), the vast majority of web sites have absolutely no obligation to get things right.

So, in a world where it may sometimes be convenient to think like David St. Hubbins, the internet provides no end of misquotes, urban legends, and flat-out erroneous information.

So, why do we allow ourselves to be so consistently misinformed? Often, it's because fiction plays better than fact. I recall a former co-worker describing someone as "not wanting facts to interfere with his opinion." And, while funny, this characteristic is a lot more common than you might think.

Consider politicians, masters of misinformation and partial truths. Politicians quickly learn to focus on whatever piece of information supports their point of view, no matter how insignificant it may be in the grand scheme of things, while completely ignoring all the facts that contradict their position. And with careful and consistent repetition, the pseudo-truth can quickly become the talking point of anyone who supports their ideology.

Why? Because our brain is so overwhelmed by information and choices, that we actually filter out whatever doesn't fit with our needs and/or point of view. And this process actually occurs at a neurophysiological level - in our pre-frontal cortex, as our brain has the remarkable capacity to selectively filter out information that doesn't fit what we already believe to be true!

For this reason, debates between those with established opinions on any number of socially volatile issues, from climate change to abortion, intended to persuade the other side to even consider an alternative to their position, generally only serve to further the divide. In fact, the vast majority of any such efforts are often solely intended to convince those on the sidelines who may not have yet formed an opinion.

Which is why we often accept what we read without question - provided it supports our existing point of view or needs. In this regard, David St. Hubbins seems to have gotten it right.

BEWARE THE CHANGE-UP!

In the classic baseball showdown between pitcher and batter, the pitcher has the upper hand by a huge margin. But if you were to analyze things from a purely statistical standpoint, hitting a ball thrown at speeds of over 90mph should be nearly impossible!

In 2009, the league batting average in Major League Baseball (the average of all players in the league), was .256. In simple terms, this means that batters had just slightly better than a 1 in 4 chance of getting a hit when stepping up to the plate. Even the best of the batters, the league leaders, improve the odds of getting a hit to just over 1 in 3. Now the odds change slightly if you are to consider stats like sacrifices, walks, and errors; but when you dissect all the statistics you could possibly get hold of (and baseball stats are almost infinite!), baseball pitchers have a significant advantage each and every time a batter steps up to the plate.

In his book How We Decide, Jonah Lehrer breaks down the near impossibility of the batter's task, like this:

A typical major league pitch travels from the hand of the pitcher to the plate in 0.35 seconds. It takes 0.25 seconds for a batter's muscles to initiate a swing, which leaves his brain with only 1/10th of a second to make up his mind as to whether or not he will swing at the pitch. In fact, it's even less time, as it takes a few milliseconds for visual information to travel from the retina to the visual cortex, so the batter actually has less than 5 milliseconds to see the pitch and decide whether or not to swing at it. Problem is, no one can think this fast, as it typically takes the brain 20 milliseconds to respond to sensory stimulus.
So, how do baseball players ever hit a pitch?

The batter's brain begins to collect and analyze information, long before the ball leaves the pitcher's hand. From the pitcher's stance to his grip on the ball, the batter's brain is picking up clues (based on what has occurred in the past under similar conditions), attempting to do what Malcolm Gladwell described in his book Blink, as "Thin-Slice;" draw a conclusion from thin slices of information, or clues. For the batter, most of this analysis is occurring at an unconscious level, so when he 'pulls the trigger' and swings, it's not always a conscious choice.

And if the pitcher didn't already have all the advantage in the world, major leaguers have an added trick up their (proverbial) sleeve - the Change-Up!

A Change-up (also called an off-speed pitch) is intentionally disguised as a fastball until the moment it leaves the pitcher's hand. As a result, the batter's brain prepares for a 90mph fastball, but what comes across the plate is typically 10% slower. The result - the batter is "way out front" and whiffs at the pitch, before it even crosses the plate. An effective change-up can make a batter look completely off-balance and awkward.

We all face the equivalent of change-ups in our everyday lives - stimulus that is thinly disguised to feel intuitively familiar.

The simplest of examples is a smile. A smile is generally accepted as a positive expression of warmth and friendly intentions. But, as we all know, a smile can easily be applied to mislead. And despite our belief that we are good at spotting those who would choose to mislead us with something as simple as a smile, most of us are actually quite poor at spotting the fakes!

Invariably, there are other tells or clues that a smile is not genuine; but if we stop at the smile, we will invariably get caught in the trap. So, the next time you feel yourself responding instinctively to someone or something that feels comfortably familiar, take a moment to look a little further and ensure that the facts support your intuitive feelings.

Want to test your skills at spotting fake smiles?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/smiles/