Does our always on, instantly connected world mean that we’ve lost the job of serendipity? Can we engineer our environment to maximise the chance of good things happening to us?

Things mentioned in this podcast:

• Red Dwarf - ‘Future Echoes’
• Doing the same thing twice is more fun than you think
• The Secretary Problem
• Games of Life by Karl Sigmund

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Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by me, Fraser McGruer, 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 binge-watching Red Dwarf.

Not quite, but I think we'll get used to it. Slightly oddly, I thought that. I said kind of Dwarf. I think you used the same D for Red and Dwarf.

Yes, Red Dwarf. Yeah, you said something like that. But I'm going to keep that as it is. Okay, yeah, go on. Nick, you've been bitch-watching. Nick, have you been binge-watching Red Dwarf?

death of serendipity here. Yeah. Peter? I think it's worth just exploring how often serendipity is supposed to happen. Right. Or it naturally happens. So there's an interesting guy, John Enza Littlewood, mathematician, calculated that you could expect to have a sort of very fundamental one in a million type of experience every 35 days. I'm not sure how he went about doing this, but actually quite regular. That means that one thing is happening to you

every three seconds, if my maths is broadly correct. There's a million seconds in about 11 days. So if you're saying you get a one in a million thing every 35 days, that implies that

a thing is happening every three seconds. Yeah. So I think that includes hearing a noise or walking through a door or subbing your toe or something like that. All these little things, one in a million that could be good or could be really bad happens every 35 days. The point is that you can't control what they are. If you try and control what they are, then they're not random anymore. So the question is, I didn't know really how to start going about this, but has that changed? Has that actually changed? Does this perception of more choice, does this choice, has it eroded that kind of one in a million thing happening every 35 days? Or actually has it made it more likely in that you can start to engineer your life and the way that it's going through choice in a direction that you want to make it more likely that you have those serendipitous things happen

that are in line with your goals? That's an interesting point, actually. But I don't know if that applies to, let's say, Netflix, for example, because I see what you're saying.

I think I see what you're saying. Take a Netflix example is something I've thought about. So Netflix is not just choice, right? It does make recommendations based on what you've previously watched. So say you're really into Cold War movies, and this has happened to me. So I've watched Dawn's Early Light and Some of All Fears and various other sort of Cold War movies on Netflix. And then Netflix pops up and suggests something I've never heard of or seen, which I then watched that I may never have actually discovered had it all just been serendipitous.

Yeah, so it's increasing the serendipity intensity.

Yes, I think so. I would characterize what's happening slightly differently. It feels to me that what it's doing is providing kind of handrails and pathways that are similar to those that have already been trodden. So you're more likely to find that the next thing is similar to things that you like. That's useful. But I feel like what it's doing is reducing the chance that you will find something you think you really don't like. That's completely out of left field. Yeah, it's making the local search more and more efficient, but reducing the probability of a kind of successful global leap into a new genre or a new type of thing that you might not have.

So I'm exploring a sort of local maxima, and I'm not finding the global maxima.

Yeah, I mean, in a sense that it is a trade-off, isn't it? Because that's global attempts to find new global maxima are inefficient.

But then maybe if I deliberately didn't choose anything, if that was my aim, I could just ignore everything on my list of things that it suggests, just go for the thing that's at the very bottom of the search tree of all the things it suggests.

But can you, though? Because I would like, for example, to do that with Google searches. I mean, very often the fun bits of Google searches... I've talked before about how I think Google has got worse, but it is the case that often the thing you're looking for isn't for several pages down. You know, it'd be great to have an option to just start me on page five, but that's not. It's not an option, is it? And in practice, we wouldn't take that option.

But also there's some other effects here, because you can talk about it in terms of effects on you and the things that you come across, right? And let's say, you know, when these... yeah, you just get more nice things in your life, let's say, that you're inclined to like. And I guess there's a kind of fairly well-trodden argument, but one of the things it has is an effect of, you know, this silo effect, and you just get all these... so there's not this sort of shared entertainment experience, or not in quite the same way as when we're growing up, let's say. That's the first thing. The second thing is, actually, I find it a little bit exhausting in a way. For about a year or so, our television was on the blink and the aerial wasn't working, but it was okay because, you know, we just had a smart TV. And I just did find it a bit wearing after a while of just sort of... and a bit limiting, actually. Yes, there was plenty of stuff that I really liked and similar stuff that was suggested to me, but I really missed just... and now my TV works again. And sometimes I like this. I find it more relaxing just to switch on the TV. Just watching something you don't want to watch? No, we're just switching on the TV and just flicking through and just obscure stuff and stuff pops up. And also, there's that weird thing that, let's say, there's the same movie on Netflix and it pops up on TV. On Netflix, I can't be bothered with it. And on TV, I go, yeah, I'll watch this, you know. It's just... it's a little bit more effortless somehow. Yeah, I think there's... I know what

you mean. I think there's two things going on here, both of which might be sort of slightly moloch-y. And, you know, we talked about this sort of moloch idea of, you know, lots of sensible decisions driving us into a situation where... which is actually sort of somehow actively worse. And I think that this issue of choice, I agree, I find choice really tiring in a way. And it's why I think... and I suspect this is quite a common experience. I think there's evidence that choice is exhausting, not only because you have to make more choices in the first place, which is effortful, but also because it's much easier to see whether what you've chosen is actually the best. And there's a kind of... there's lower search costs. I mean, much less friction. And I think I've noticed in myself that I'll start watching something, I'll give this a go. But actually, I'll only give it 10 minutes. And then I'll go, yeah, yeah, you know, I'll start doing that thing I know is, you know, fun. And, yeah. And I wonder if, you know, the rise of things like, you know, restaurants where you can just have fried chicken, you know, rather than having a big menu of choices is almost, in a way, is a kind of reaction to the fact that we recognize how exhausting choice is. And also, I mean,

again, danger of going into grumpy old man territory here, which I know we never do. But what was I gonna say? Probably blame something on millennials. Yeah, well, it is. But I do notice this amongst millennials. It makes us more demanding people, you know?

You mean us sort of Generation X type people?

Yeah, well, just generally, anyone who's exposed to this kind of stuff and uses this, really, we're talking about technology here. We just become more demanding and a bit more sort of self-centered, I think, you know?

I think that's just the sense of entitlement you get with advancing age, Fraser. In your case, anyway.

Thank you. Yeah, because none of us are advancing. Yeah, because I remember when I was a kid, there were only three channels, you know? I know that's where I'm going down, you know?

You walked to school 20 miles uphill both ways. Yeah, one shoe. Yeah, as well.

Let's not, yes, I mean, it is important not to glamorize. Let's not forget those interminable mornings. I mean, I remember on Saturday mornings, I used to get up at, you know, sort of half past five sometimes in the morning because I loved Saturdays. So, I'd wake up and I'd think, oh, brilliant, whack a day. The Wide Awake Club is going to be on in like, oh, no, an hour and a half. And you'd sit through 10 minutes of the test card. And then you'd have TV AM, which was the most boring program in the world. Frank the Boff interviewing someone. And you'd have to sit there and watch that. And, you know, life as a kid in the 80s was dominated by that kind of experience.

But it made you a better person, Nick.

Well, it may have done. Well, did it though? I don't know.

Had he had the option to watch something that he would have, you know, had he had the choice to watch something he probably would have done.

Yeah, but it means he has to be content with discontent. And I think that's not a bad thing.

There may be. I wonder, and I don't know if there's studies on this, because to be honest, I've only just thought about this, but whether it is a skill sort of entertaining yourself or at least, you know, being a finding stuff to do. I mean, and I can't tell whether it's just my kids being like their personalities or whether it is something you do with the modern era. But I feel like they probably struggle much more than I did, or at least are just so rarely faced with the situation where they've got to entertain themselves, you know, because in the car, they've got the, you know, for long journeys, they've got the videos to watch. And, you know, they can always watch something they know they like on TV. And I, whereas, you know, for me, a lot of there was a lot of time you were in a restaurant and you didn't have anything to play with, or, you know, you might have had a book, but you had to kind of invent your own stuff. And yeah, I mean, that's something I sort of kind of idly worry about. I'm not sure whether it's true. I mean, it could be Peter may well argue that, you know, all these tools make you more creative and give you more ability to do things that are interesting.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, I think that I would definitely support that hypothesis. Because I remember summer holidays, like extended time off during the summer, being just bored out of my wits. Like out of the first couple of weeks, you've done everything. You've seen all your friends, you've had sleepovers, and you've played around in the woods, and you've ridden your bike. Like, just then you've got like three or four more weeks of just nothing. And it was just so boring. But had I had, you know, had I had like, I grew up sort of pre-proper internet really, way before the internet is like it is today. PPI. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, you know, the opportunity then, I can again say to myself now, for days, just going on very random YouTube rabbit hole journeys, and Wikipedia rabbit hole journeys. And look, I, you know, picking up a lot of this, a lot of this trash and just sort of occupying time and just scratching an itch in my brain. But a lot of it, I'm learning something I would get new, genuinely new, that's interesting. And I pursue that for a bit further a bit more. And that would not be possible without this sort of all the seemingly infinite choice that I have to just click on another link and go and watch something else or go and read something else.

And yeah, I sort of see what you're saying. But I when I go on those same journeys, I just feel a bit sick. And this, you know, disliking myself, I get I get used to sometimes

you feel start to feel giddy. You sort of feel you feel dizzy with the amount of information you're taking in, and you have to take a break, you realise that you've been there for three hours intently staring at a screen, and you need to take a break. But well, I bet these you'll be you, but it's empowered by this sort of big choice engine that we've created called the internet. Otherwise, you know, incredibly limited, you might have had books in the house, a few few games, computer games, the distance I could ride my bike, just in a day, sticking the ball, and possibly a local library, which had about 12 books in it,

you know, sort of? Yeah, I mean, but but I think and I think going back to this, this issue of friction, or the big reduction in friction, like how easy it is to do new things once you're embarked on on a thing already. I, I worry that, you know, it complete completionism is is sort of much harder now as much as a complete things like you get to anything challenging, you know, chat, boring bit of an episode, or a hard bit of a book, or a, you know, or a difficult section of a computer game. It's so much easier to just go and do a different thing. And I and I, I don't know, I, I felt that I perhaps have lost a bit of a sense of achievement about things, because, you know, I just this, this sort of disincentive, I could just be me, but I feel like I'm disincentivized to finish stuff off in a way that I wasn't in the olden days. I think it goes to just a just a sort

of counterpoint. I binge watched The Walking Dead about I didn't get I've watched all the series, but I binge watched about four series in very short time when I was on holiday. And I got to the point where actually a lot of The Walking Dead is a great series, there's lots of great stuff in it. But there's a lot of just padding, it's like every series could be compressed to like a feature length movie, and it would be probably just as good. Yeah, like I find myself fast forwarding through all the stuff that wasn't zombies to get to the next zombie bit. And it was much more interesting. It's like all the sort of boring character interaction and love story, backstory stuff that was largely irrelevant to the situation that they were in. I was more interested in the strategic problem that they all were trying to collectively solve. You're like that person who

buys the Pink Floyd album and then and then only listens to the top 10 hit from it. Yeah, but I

got entertainment and joy out of doing that. And sort of sort of what I perceive wasting time listening to, you know, keeping track of all the minutiae that was going on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

We're close to getting towards the end. And there's there's a question I want to ask anyone

something to add. Yeah, just that I think the problem is not just, you know, what we're saying is, well, we're not really quite sure if this is good or bad, right? These trends that there are trade offs. And I think part of the problem is that we, we actually are known to be bad estimating the extent to which we like choice, for example, we'll always opt for choice if we can, right? Even though actually, sometimes people report that they don't particularly like choice. And there's lots of things like, you know, we, I mean, we kind of underestimate how much we will enjoy new things. And, and, you know, it's very hard to look at behavior at the way people behave and then say, Okay, well, people are behaving that way. So it must be good. An example, I'm sure I mentioned before was the study about crisps, where people came along and what part of the it was a conference, I think people were at, and some people were given the choice to pre select their crisps every day for a week. And the people who pre selected on day one, chose a variety of flavors. So they would have cheese and onion one day and you know, and salt and vinegar the next. The people who chose on the day, always chose the same flavor, which was their favorite flavor, presumably salt and vinegar. Now, what do you learn from that? Well, first of all, that we're either that we're bad at forecasting what we will like, and we overestimate our, our taste for variety, or that actually, you know, when we have a more distant perspective, and are able to make a more kind of objective decision, we may, we make a better one, which is for additional variety, kind of knowing that if we were left it to ourselves at that time, we would always go for the familiar option. And so I don't think we can look at very, we can't really look at behavior and work out which of those is is right. And I think again, it comes down to it's one of these many situations, which comes down to a bit of a clash between our two personalities, you know, the two, the kind of more primeval personality, which says we like salt and vinegar, take it. And the more kind of, you know, sort of front brain persona, which says no, you know, you know, that's not good for you, you should try different things. Yeah, I like that. That's a really nice

story. I think also what we're talking about there is happiness versus pleasure, or contentedness

versus pleasure. And I think that all of those kinds of distinctions that people make tap into something very fundamental about our cognitive architecture. Okay, I've got something fun for

That's interesting. I like that. I like that. Look, just to finish off briefly. I've got a question for you. You talked, you know, when you let us in, Nick, with talking about how by lucky hap, you came across Red Dwarf. I can think of a few books, bits of music, films, especially, in my life that really stand out as, wow, I just had no idea it was just there. And it was just quite a discovery. What are yours? What's your one, one to three? I'll give you one, you know,

or whatever. It can be a book. Go for it. Yeah, I got one sort of, yeah, I mean, one stands out. I mean, I'm really interested. You know, when I discovered the field of game theory, that really is such a useful set of models to understand so much about the world, so much about human interaction. And, you know, I did, I did study economics and sort of specialised in game theory when I was at university. But that interest was sparked by, there was this excellent, it was actually a Marxist bookshop in Finsbury Park near where I lived. But places like that don't exist anymore, right? It was a really kind of, you know, shoddy shop, books falling off the shelves, loads of stuff about, you know, about sort of Che Guevara. But there was there was like a philosophy section. And I was quite interested in that. And I found this book called Games of Life. I can't remember, I can link to it, but I can't remember the author. But it had lots of little chapters, each of them studying like an interesting game, and what it teaches you about real life and how it's how that kind of game is expressed in, you know, animal populations and in human behaviour. And I just, this book was just amazing. You know, I didn't even know this was a thing. And that is a good that's that to me is a really strong example of actually, you know, Amazon, I didn't know about game theory, Amazon would never have recommended it to me. Because, you know, Amazon didn't know until that point wouldn't have known that I was someone who was going to be interested in it.

Yeah, I think I'll go next if yeah, yeah. So I think for me, one, there's a couple of films that really stand out one is Serpico, which I was at university and around a mate's house and just watching TV, and just suddenly started watching this film that started about a minute earlier. And it was Serpico with Al Pacino. And it's it's one of my favourite films. I love that. The Big Lebowski. Again, that just sort of just sort of it was just there. Yeah. And then a bit of serendipity and saying what happens to me all the time now is I love you've been framed. I absolutely love it. Popcorn for the brain. Yeah. And you know, I've sometimes gone on to my ITV hub to watch it. And I'm just not that interested. But if I'm just flicking through channels, and it happens to go across ITV or ITV2, whatever it is, and it's there, you've been framed, I love it. And my kids love it as well. So. So yeah, those are mine. Yeah. People falling

over you can't beat it. I'm struggling really to think of anything. I think Peter's life is so highly engineered that he's eliminated all serendipity. In my notes, when I was formulating this, the research for this, I wrote specific, I wrote, quote, looking back, things, good things of my life, I've by and large been made by choice. There we are. I think that's a good answer.

Something quite charming, but maybe slightly naive about that as well. I don't know.

Peter is the master of his fate and the captain of his own soul.

Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I can't think of any.

I think that's a nice enough answer to, you know, we can all, we can all doubt that to whatever extent we feel. But it's still a good, a good twist on what you're expecting.

Exactly, exactly. Well, I think that's a nice moment, a nice note to wrap up on. So thank you as always for listening to the Cognitive Engineering podcast. I'm Fraser McGruer, been here with Nick Hare and Peter Coghill of Aleph Insights. And until next time, goodbye.