February 2008 Archives

Science has a reasonable understanding of matter and how the strong, the weak, and the electromagnetic forces and (at least for practical purposes) gravity affect it. We also have a firm grasp on an large array of other natural laws and principles.

But none of the forces or laws indicate that, from a human point of view, there is a constant evolution and change in our universe. They only describe change within so limited scopes that one cannot express connections between cause on the microscopic level and effect on the macroscopic level, or vice versa.

The laws of nature do not state anything about the development of life; although we do understand how DNA replicates, how organisms reproduce and mutate, how organisms adapt and survive according to changing environments, and how they in turn change their environments, we cannot explain which direction life will take. Neither do the laws of nature explain our emotions or reactions in spite of a good understanding of biochemistry, some neurological insight, etc.

I think now understand how to configure Microsoft's products in such a way that they appeal to me intuitively.

Now, in the world of user interfaces, "intuitively" simply means that applications do what you're used to. In that sense, I suppose the only intuitively correct behavior among Microsoft applications would be frequent crashes, mangling of your documents, incorrect calculations in your spreadsheets, file conversion problems after service upgrades, intelligent help systems provided your IQ matches your room temperature, and so on. I suppose that in that sense I don't have to change anything.

However, I'm a Linux user at home, and while Linux applications often have their shortcomings that can often be traced to a nerdish lack of attention to the fact that non-programmers might use the applications as well, at least they rarely do something that appeals only to complete idiots. Except when they take a well throught through Linux distribution such as Ubuntu and decide to create a "Christian edition" of it, of course, but the Linux community has its share of dolts, too.

I want applications to not do my thinking for me based on others' heuristics. If my applications must do something anticipatory, at least they should seed their heuristic algorithms with my particular behavior, which I find just a little more intelligent than that of the broad market average Microsoft customer: I want my applications to do what I want, not what Mr. Average wants. Microsoft, on the other hand, wants its applications to do what Mr. Average wants, knowing that Mr. Average doesn't really know to begin with.

So there you have it. I basically want the opposite of what John Doe wants, and consequently what Microsoft wants him to want. This provides me with a perfect recipe for configuring my Microsoft products at work where unfortunately I have little choice in terms of my applications use.

The key is to invert all preselected options.

For example, when MSN Messenger recently proposed that I "learn more," that is, that I upgrade to the next, less insecure version, if presents me with installation options enabling MSN as a start page in Internet Explorer, and offers to harvest use data to use at Microsoft's discretion (not that I doubt it does anyway, but at least it gives you some artificial sense of the existence of company ethics). So I inverted these selections.

Next, MSN Messenger offered to install a blog writer, a mail access feature, one more toolbar, or an image gallery, which had all been selected for me. I might want some security features to be installed, but keeping its coding tradition, Microsoft had deselected that option. I inverted the selections once again.

Similarly, I've learned that any installation of a Microsoft product should involve a visit to the tab in the options window that was once named "Advanced" to practically invert all of the selections. The tabs have been ordered differently within recent years, distributing the options contributing to automated intelligence among multiple pages, making the task a little more cumbersome. It is still somewhat straight-forward to make the Microsoft products behave somewhat less stupidly than at their default configuration.

In Microsoft Word, look for anything that seems automated in the Options window. So for example, "Mail as attachment" may be safely left checked, because it does not seem like an unexpected, pseudo-intelligent move from Word. In contrast, correcting your typos as you type will lead to highly unexpected results, many of which will be undesired with the default dictionary, in particular if you are writing in another language than English. The letter 'i' means "in" or "inside" in my language, and I really don't want those words capitalized in mid-sentence. Oh, now I mention it, perhaps I should tell you that these options are no longer found in the "Options" window, but in the "Autocorrect Options" window. You may need to entertain yourself with a little explaration of the menus which may be found in the strangest of places.

Covering the entire options system of the various Microsoft products is far beyond the scope of any blog, and probably even beyond the scope of any but the most detailed users manual. There is instead a simple rule, which says:

"Invert any option that indicates automated behavior".

Following this rule will increase the chances that your Microsoft product will treat you as a reasonably intelligent being.

"Chirp, chirp," says the little turkey chicken, and its mother reacts by feeding the chicken. And the mother turkey is in fact ready to feed anything—even its sworn enemy, a stuffed polecat, is carefully nurtured if equipped with a tape recorder that plays back the "chirp, chirp" sound. It looks like a mechanism where an innocent sound triggers the playback of a complex series of actions, much like a tape recorder that is turned on and fitted with a tape that plays back a standard behavior.

Robert B. Cialdini, professor in psychology at Arizona State University, has studied when similar "tapes" are played back in humans, and what triggers the playback of these tapes. And in that sense we are no smarter than the mother turkey, who is easily manipulated into caring for its worst enemy.

Figure 1. Dr. Robert B. Cialdini.

One Foot in the Door

It has been a significant advantage throughout human evolution to return a service for another service, or to offer a gift after receiving one. When someone gives us something, it is an almost irresistible urge that we must give something in return. The eagerness to pay back usually overcomes any negative feelings against the gift-giver, and it does not matter if one even declined the gift. The size of the gift is also largely irrelevant, and people are willing to offer considerable gifts in return for insignificant gifts.

This reciprocal principle, as it has been termed, can of course be used to coerce people into doing something. Free samples in super markets are thus not intended to convince us that a particular food tastes good, because few of us are capable of determining that. Instead, these free samples make us wish to buy something now that we received these gifts. The flowers handed out by the Hare Krishna monks are certainly not an expression of universal love either, but gifts that almost force the recipients to provide monetary donations. Free merchandise from various companies is of course also not motivated by altruism.

The reciprocal principle also works on a somewhat more hidden level that is widely used. If one begins by demanding a disproportionally high price for a service or a product, one may "reluctantly" offer to lower the price to a value that is still far too high. However, by offering a "gift" in the form of a reduced price, the customer is more willing to "pay back" by accepting the new offer than if one had made this offer to begin with.