Chris, Fraser, Peter and Nick explore how social conventions make decisions for us.

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Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast, produced by Tell Me Studios 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 Fraser McGruer and I'm here with Chris Wragg, Peter Coghill and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights. And this week we're discussing when we use plates, when we use bowls, and why. So Chris, I believe you recently faced a dilemma on this front. Can you tell us about it?

Yes, so I was making a meal which involved using the leftovers from the previous day's meal and I completed this meal and came to serve it to myself.

I feel like explaining what the meal is, is important at this point.

Okay, the meal involved a roast dinner, so roast chicken and Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes, various vegetables, one of which was the pea, the common pea. And also gravy, I should note. So this was sort of reheated and sliced and fried and then served. And I was then, what should I serve this meal in? I opened the kitchen cupboard, was faced with plates or bowls and because it contained peas, I had this sense it had to be served on a plate. It would have been much more practical to have it in a bowl and to eat it with perhaps a spoon, but that just seemed indecent in some way. It should be on a plate with a fork, a knife and fork. And it led me to start thinking about, here was a decision being made almost on my behalf by some set of rules I couldn't really see, but which were governing my behaviour nevertheless. And I started to think, what's going on with that? In fact, it's even worse than that in that I'm now with my five-year-old daughter propagating this set of rules. She insists when we have anything with peas in, she wants to eat it with a spoon. And my wife and I are, you're too old to eat your peas with a spoon. And I'm like, but why? It's much easier to eat peas with a spoon than it is with a fork. And yet, so it's something around social convention. It's not that I worry that she'll be ostracised from polite society or it's just, there's this set of rules that seem rigid in some way that help us make decisions. And sometimes those decisions, I can't always see the point of those decisions. So yeah, so the people who,

who are, you know, trying to negotiate the Middle East peace process have got it easy compared to Chris and his... Easy peasy. Yeah. I mean, what a nightmare. Let's hope none of us

ever have to suffer this. But the point is that, so what I'm saying is, they are probably, they're probably making decisions about the Middle East peace process governed by some set of rules, like, you know, okay, so the Palestinians and the Israelis, they never sit on the same side of the table or something, that are probably governing the way negotiations are going that are based on some hidden set of rules that aren't explicit and may be suboptimal.

If we could, so if we could fix the peas problem, then, you know, what else follows?

Well, quite, but I think it's about transparency. I think it's about trying to understand what the social conventions are about. They're not necessarily social conventions, but what these, these kind of cultural, cultural implicit rules are about. Are they, are they a help or a hindrance? And if they could help the peace process. Yeah. Well, should we explore a little

bit why social conventions exist and why they're useful? And then perhaps when they break down things. So, I mean, they exist for a reason. I think they're, they're similar in a way to language and having a common protocol for communication. It's a social protocol that if I go to Fraser's house and he's serving a meal, he can expect me to use a certain type of cutlery and be okay with that. And it makes, it makes Fraser's life easier. It doesn't have to cater for every, every possible combination of sticks and bowls and plates and then allow me to choose. He'll just accept that I'll accept whatever. And so there's some sort of trade off there. If I don't particularly like using a fork for peas but I'm okay with that, then it's probably a lower cost for me just to go along with it than it is to kick up a fuss. And I might lose some sort of social capital by being peculiar, unnecessarily fussy. So there's a sort of, there's an important greasing of the social dynamic that these social protocols give you. And it lowers the cognitive burden for when you're dealing with people. You know that somebody's gonna, you're hoping to work with somebody on achieving a common aim, might be eating a meal in this case, then you can expect them to conform to a certain standard and still accomplish what they're achieving. So that's, I think that's broadly why they exist. But what I find interesting is why are they so persistent and resilient? So this, so why, why did you feel, why was your urge so strong to go for the plate rather than a bowl?

And this is the point. So it wasn't as if, this was a meal I was eating late at night on my own, so it wasn't as if there was anyone to tut at me as I used my spoon and bowl. Except for every listener of this podcast. Well quite, yes, yes. Well rest assured I used a fork and plate as I should.

I've got the answer. I've got the answer. And this sort of ties in with a separate project I have at the moment. I was talking to you about it earlier, Nick. There's actually a photo project that's about identity and it's about, you know, am I Scottish, am I English, am I Jamaican, am I, and it's all about identity in the context of being British as well. And, and identity actually can be quite fluid because it can change from one generation to the next. You can have German, then Argentinian, then English, for example, in three generations. But actually identity can be quite fixed because it tends to get fixed in our formative years, okay, when we're kids. And I would suggest that that's the same reason here is because of the first eight years of your life, let's say, is that you're always told, this is how you must eat peas. And it gets fixed because of that behaviour gets fixed in those formative years. So I think that's the answer.

Well it's not, is it? Because it doesn't explain where that comes from. Okay, well isn't it? Well, I think we need to get, there's a couple of things here where I think we're skating over some, some big or making some big assumptions. It isn't, Peter's talking about one particular type of norm, which is a sort of coordination issue, where we all just have to agree to do things one way. And it doesn't much matter which way that is. So classic example is, you know, driving, driving on the left in the UK, as long as we all do it, it's fine. It could just be

But you'd feel okay about that if you were doing it on the other side of another country? Right, right. You wouldn't feel the same guilt that Chris felt?

Look, I'm sure if Chris went on holiday to some weird part of, you know, Mongolia, where they are happy to eat peas in bowls, he would feel better about himself. I don't think he would. Okay, look, anyway, the point is, the point is that, that is only one type of, of sort of norm, because there's other types of norms. And they actually require different explanations, I think. First of all, there's norms, which are actually just better. Right? So why did we stop? Why did we start using forks, for example, it wasn't just some weird new fad, forks are better, they make eating easier and less dirty. We don't need to explain why we started using forks, they are just better. That's how technology proliferates, because someone comes up with a better way of doing something. And, you know, it takes off at the speed of information. And that's fine. We don't need to worry about that. Then there's other, there's the classic sort of coordination things. Yeah, where you've got, where we've got to kind of agree to do things the same way, but it doesn't matter which way. Where it starts to get trickier is where there are certain kinds of behaviour, which are, let's say, just, you know, good for me, but bad for you. So littering, for example, like we've got very different attitudes to littering now than we did when I was a kid. When I was a kid, it was, you know, acceptable. People would tuss at you if you littered, but it wasn't anywhere near as much of a sort of social opprobrium as there is now. Smoking in pubs, you know, that was something where in the past we tolerated it, and now we don't. None of our understanding has changed, but we have just, we've sort of moved towards a different equilibrium. So, you know, and to do that requires kind of collective action. So it's hard to move around. But, you know, we know that there's a good reason to do it. We probably don't want people doing bad things if it sort of helps them and harms other people. There's also the issue of things which are, you know, bad for me, but good for you. So things like just, you know, me holding doors open, for example, that's a cultural expectation, you know, whether or not you stand up to let people sit down on the tube. You know, that's something which was much more, you know, 30 years ago, men would stand up to let women sit down. Now they only do it if they think they're pregnant, by and large. You know, so that's an example where we've shifted. Again, it's a matter of preference. The really complicated and difficult things are when there's a social norm, which is bad for everyone, and no one wants it, but we all keep doing it. And I think, you know, the classic examples of that are the sort of arms races, you know, kind of corporate profiteering, things like the things that led up to the financial crisis, this sort of culture of everyone was taking risks, everyone was taking risks because everyone else was doing it, everyone knew it was bad, everyone knew they shouldn't be doing it, and somehow we all just carried on doing it. Those and those are the norms which we know we want to change. But anyway, I suppose it's not just as simple as coordination. Social norms have, they have impacts as well. And so the question is, is Chris doing something he knows is wrong and is worse? Is it just a matter of choice? Or is it, you know, is it actually better? Is it for some reason better to use a plate for a reason we haven't thought of? Well, hold on. So I mean,

you've broadened it out quite a lot there. And there's a few different categories we're talking about, it seems to me. But all we're talking about here is one particular category, which I'll stand by what I say, which I think is, it's, it just feels so, it's got strong emotions attached to it, because it was brought about during a formative period. And, and when you were talking about cultural norms, then that's, that's what we're talking about. But I think you've, I like that you've broadened discussion and sort of deepened it as well. But Chris, you? Well,

I was just gonna say, you know, so I see myself now, ingraining in my own children, this weird set of things that help you make decisions, but aren't necessarily the right decisions to make. And so, so yes, they will have a strong emotional attachment, perhaps to that set of rules, because it was instilled in them as a child. But that fundamentally still gets to the issue of what, why societally, are we ingraining certain things in our in our children. And, you know, I guess a degree of it comes down to social capital. And, you know, are you the type of person who has a, has a tattoo or something? Or are you not the type of person who has a tattoo? And what that says about you in, in, you know, people with and without tattoos company? So, so, so there's that element of it, there's the instilling social capital in your, in your children. But it's, it's also, I think something, something deeper than that about trying to, trying to help us, trying to minimise the amount of decisions we have to make at any, at any time that they're almost governed for us. So we, we just, we just access our, you know, our index of what, what it is we're supposed

to do. Hold on, Nick, sorry, hold on, Nick. So Peter, you wanted to come in with something?

I think there is, you know, I think you're right to be concerned. Because if you, if you were dogmatic about the use of plates for peas, extending it beyond this example, but for the sake of argument, on your children, and there was an opportunity to develop a whole new crockery system that was far superior, then they're less likely, I would posit, to come up with that, because they just see peas and they always think plates. Whereas if they have the freedom to experiment and you say, well, actually you choose what kind of colour you want. And daddy actually got a better idea for how we could do this entirely.

But yeah, but I think the, I think the interesting thing about these types of rules is they are kind of extensible or, or, or you can work with them. So I'd never necessarily considered the peas on a plate issue, but if you give me some other meal, I'll be able to put it into a plate, plate or a bowl decision, you know, pasta. Yeah, that's acceptable. You can have that in a, in a bowl, but, but you, you haven't made this explicit to yourself. You're sort of fishing around and you think, okay, that for some reason, that meal feels like another meal, which I would put on a plate. And so that's a, that's a plate meal and that's a, that's a bowl meal. And I've, that, that, that's quite a useful cognitive shortcut to make decisions rather than to think about everything in, in specific. You think, how did we do this last time?

That seemed to work. Let's do that again. Yeah. I mean, so I think, I think the distinct, there's a distinct, we can make a useful distinction here between, and I think what we're talking about is the sort of distinction between etiquette and politeness, right? Where politeness is a principle. It's about being nice to other people, being considerate about other people. Etiquette is a set of rules to follow. Now etiquette presumably maps onto politeness in some world, you know, let's say sort of late Victorian England. Etiquette was probably synonymous with politeness, but of course the problem is, and I think we've touched on this, that we are, do not always think about things from first principles as we've always, we've evolved not to, to save effort. We've evolved to be conformist because actually that's most of the time easier than having to work everything out yourself. It's much easier to just do what other people are doing. The problem is when we confuse following a rule with, with following a principle. And that's, that, that's where it all, that's where I think a lot of conflict comes from. You know, classically the most famous satirical example being from Gulliver's Travels where, you know, there are, there's a sort of war between the big Indians and the little Indians about which way up you should eat your boiled egg, you know, which is actually stands in for a lot of, you know, cultural conflict, which is actually just about doing things differently, not, not one, one, one team doing it, doing it better. But we should always bear in mind that it's still possible, cultural, it, that you can have cultural conflict about things that are just totally and utterly coordination issues. But just because you have a cultural conflict, it doesn't mean it's a coordination issue. You can have cultural conflict that is meaningful and where actually one side is right. And, and, you know, the example I think I've used in another podcast is queuing. I think queuing is better. It's just better all round. It's more efficient than, than having a culture where you don't queue or you jump queues. So that's, that's an example of, you know, you've got to try and work out what kind of, what kind of rule it is and whether or not it has a

foundation before you can start. Some are useful and some are not. Yeah. Beyond, beyond, yeah, beyond this sort of cultural equality and cosmopolitan attitude that, that when you're, if you're seeking the optimum way of doing something, dogmatic adherence to rules is probably going to be a less optimal solution than finding a better one. And so in any, in any cultural norm, you need to find a balance of deviance that invites new ways, new innovations of doing things in order to find an optimal solution. Well, that's, that's evolution,

isn't it? Isn't it? That's, evolution is about deviance within, from one generation to the next

in genes that, and they, they deviate. Partly, yeah. When it comes to adaptation, but it's, I think a bigger, bigger part of evolution is the ability to adapt within your current phenotype. So if you, if you, without any kind of modification, if you're able to exploit a new opportunity, then you're in a stronger position. Well, yeah, it's sort of,

although there's, you know, I think there's some evidence that people get more authoritarian and more rule focused in, in times of economic hardship, which is quite interesting. I think that's, I'd suggest that being innovative and creative and questioning everything is not always optimal. Sometimes it is better just to knuckle down. I think a good example is if you look at the way the military operates, you know, even people, people are trained to follow orders they think are wrong, because that's still better than having a culture where everyone questions the orders and says, well, how do we know there isn't a better way of doing this? I think, you know, we, being innovative, asking the right questions, asking questions about why we're doing things is all very well, but there's a reason that our instinct is to not do that often.

Yes. I like that. And actually that makes me think of sometimes with my kids, when I just go, look, just do it. When I've just had enough, it's great. Isn't it wonderful to have kids who, children raise them to ask questions and question authority, etc, etc. Sometimes, no,

look, just do it. Unless you're the authority they're questioning, in which case, completely

unacceptable. Yeah. Listen, I really enjoyed that. There's lots of things there I liked. But let's wrap these things up. But also we've still got, we've still got time. There's a few questions I want to ask. First of all, has anyone noticed that Chris and Peter are wearing the same socks?

They're similar. I think they're different colours. From my, from my, from my, from my

angle and distance, they look pretty much the same. A visual demonstration for the podcast listeners.

Yeah. Is it a, is it, is it a cultural thing? I don't know if this relates. Are they sort of

blue toed sock people? The blue, the kind of sock with colour on the toe and heel are just

very, very common. Yeah. No, I am and always will be a stripy sock man. And I hate these blue toed sock people with a passion. But at least we don't have holes in our socks. I was gonna say you're obviously also, you're one of those holy people as well, right? I do. I, well, I mean, my house has wooden floorboards. So the nails are always. Oh, that's why. It's not because I'm a scumbag.

Second question. Chris, something I often wonder with my leftovers on a, on a, from a, from a, from a Sunday roast is what to do with the gravy. Because it's one, it's just a part of the meal that was, that probably has about the most input into it, or the most, I find it the trickiest to do and the hardest to get right. And then I've always got loads of gravy left over at the end. I never know what to do with it. So can one just mix it up in the rest and do a bubble and bring,

put that into the bubble and squeak mix? So, so it depends how much gravy you've got, of course. But I think you fry it without the gravy. Right. And then at the last minute you apply the gravy.

Okay. So just use it as gravy again. Reheated, yeah. I just want, uh, uh, gravy. I used to, I used to be like you, Fraser. I used to be, you know, I've got to get the best sticking up. Always. It needs a bit of lemon juice and then, well, the red wine needs to simmer down. It's going to be absolutely. And I just came to the conclusion that it just wasn't as nice as, as Bisto. And now I just use Bisto by default. I used to, that's that. I don't care what society says. Bisto is great. And it's,

and it's like you boil a kettle and it's done. And I do what my mom always did, which was just use Bisto. And then if it's the right kind of joint, the juices go into it. I used to think that you

two were so wise, but yeah. Yeah. See, I think wisdom is about, is about, is about asking that question. I think this is, this is why I'm different. This is, this is why I'm different to what I was like 10 years ago. I would never have admitted to using Bisto. Uh, but you know, I've discovered that it's better. So this is a good example where you're, you're just being conformist. Whereas I'm, you know, I'm, I've questioned it and said, you know what, this middle class thing that you have to make your own gravy, like you're a Michelin starred restaurant. It's just not as nice as Bisto. That would be a nice argument. Sorry, we should, we should say that other gravy brands are available.

Sure. This would be a nice argument, were it not for the fact that you're wrong, because just, just, just, um, empirically you could, and in fact we could do a, a, a, we could go out to the streets and, and sort of blind taste with, you know, try these three things. Okay. And I guarantee you that 90% of the time, no more than 90% of the time people go, I'll go for that one over there, which is the, the non-Bisto one.

You're going to have to get people to drink gravy though, which I think is good.

But we can make, no, but we can make four and it's very difficult. Yeah. See, white, white, people used to drink gravy. Uh, well, they used to drink OXO cubes, didn't they? Yeah. Beef tea. And beveral. Yeah. Now no one would drink an OXO cube. But listen-

Yeah. Listen, I want to, I don't want to get bogged down in gravy. Um, there's a, there's, although it wouldn't be too bad.

I was just going to raise a social norm. Well, it's not really a social norm, it's where social norms kind of conflict. But what I really hate is when you go to somebody's house and you're expected to take your shoes off. What's that about? It's like, they've chosen to have white carpets, not me. And I'm their guest. So why not let me walk in with my boots on?

I mean, yeah, I suppose. No, I, and I, I, this is why I defend being basically, uh, not bothered, which is my attitude. Like, I don't have, there's no policy in this house. Some people have a shoes on policy. Uh, but there's also, yeah, you get a lot of people with the shoes off policy. I just don't care. Like, and I don't, and it's a bit like, you know, I don't, it's why I don't like coasters. Coasters are a way of making you feel bad. Um, you know, why just, the table is doing the job of holding the cup. It's just, I think life is easier if you don't have all these rules that you feel like you should be following. Um, and you know, as long as you, you live your life according to a kind of mill style liberalism that you don't go around hurting people, you know, these, a lot of these, well who cares? Or spill coffee on their table. They do. You're hurting them. Yeah, no, that's fine. But I mean, it's my, that's my table. Maybe they should buy tables that are less precious. Okay. You're, I hadn't realized you were such a libertarian, Nick.

Um, I think that's a good point though. That's, it's the, the social norms are useful when they help us coordinate and get things done and don't harm it. When, as soon as they are used for harm. So when social norms are used to exclude people, um, like etiquette, it was invented to mark people out as beings of a certain social class. That's when it becomes dangerous and something needs to probably be done about it.

Dangerous and actually quite useful.

Okay, let's wrap up there. Um, so I don't, I don't think we've, the thing is that there is no conclusion here because the fact is that for the example that I used and that Chris used, we will remain perpetually uncomfortable about it. Nothing will ever change that. Um, that's my thought. Um, so we'll wrap up there. Um, thank you gentlemen. Um, thank you as always to listening to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast with Peter Coghill, Nick Hare and Chris Wragg of Aleph Insights. I'm Fraser McGruer. Uh, thank you for listening until next time. Bye-bye.