Argh. I’m reminding myself that Retroactive Rewards Rage is a cognitive fallacy. Is there a formal name for it? I bet you could induce it in chimps.
Anyway,
Abstraction Telephone
Divide into at least 4 groups, of minimum size 1 and maximum size maybe 5. Each group gets a different short passage. They collaborate to translate the passage their choice of either “one rung up,” making it all more abstract, or “one rung down,” making it all more specific. Group N then passes their translated passage only, not the original, to Group N+1 modulo the number of groups. Then each group performs the same operation, then passes it to the next group in line. I think two iterations will be enough to get something entertainingly mangled, so then each group in turn performs the passage they’ve been handed for the audience. The remaining people may try to guess what the original passage was.
Example (2/3rds stolen from George Orwell):
Group 1 gets:
“I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.”
They note that everything but the last clause is pretty specific, so they decide to move it up the ladder. They write
Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.
Group 2 gets this. They note that it’s extremely abstract, so they decide to make it more specific. They write
Any competent Magic: the Gathering player will beat the best one in the world at least 10% of the time. Statistical models of baseball games show that a significant amount of variance cannot be attributed to any stable ability of players and teams. Even the most carefully hedged investment strategy can be wiped out by a black swan.
Group 3 does a dramatic reading of this passage, and maybe Group 4 tries to guess what the original passage was.
Example:
Group 2′s first passage was this, from Poor Richard’s Almanac:
The Family of Fools is ancient.
Necessity never made a good bargain.
If Pride leads the Van, Beggary brings up the Rear.
There’s many witty men whose brains can’t fill their bellies.
Weighty Questions ask for deliberate Answers.
They decide to add specificity. Each group member picks a proverb to translate, and they get:
The man who is amazed that whenever he looks at his clock, it reads “11:11,” would in prehistory be the man who thinks he can control the weather with a ritual.
A thirstier person will pay more for water.
If you won’t accept handouts from your relatives now, you might be begging from strangers later.
The market value for a degree in English is pretty damn low.
When given a difficult question, wait 5 minutes, by an actual clock, before proposing solutions.
Group 3 gets this, and decides to take it even further down the ladder into specificity, giving real-life examples of these situations, or empirical economic formulae.
“Higher resolution and zoom capability should be priorities. Be sure to use a good quality lens. Look for cameras with more and better features. Don’t pay more than you can afford!”
Group 4 gets this. They note that they can’t reverse this process, since too much information has been destroyed, but they can further abstract it to
“Figure out what you want in a camera, and how much you’re willing to pay.”
Argh. I’m reminding myself that Retroactive Rewards Rage is a cognitive fallacy. Is there a formal name for it? I bet you could induce it in chimps.
Anyway,
Abstraction Telephone
Divide into at least 4 groups, of minimum size 1 and maximum size maybe 5. Each group gets a different short passage. They collaborate to translate the passage their choice of either “one rung up,” making it all more abstract, or “one rung down,” making it all more specific. Group N then passes their translated passage only, not the original, to Group N+1 modulo the number of groups. Then each group performs the same operation, then passes it to the next group in line. I think two iterations will be enough to get something entertainingly mangled, so then each group in turn performs the passage they’ve been handed for the audience. The remaining people may try to guess what the original passage was.
Example (2/3rds stolen from George Orwell):
Group 1 gets:
“I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.”
They note that everything but the last clause is pretty specific, so they decide to move it up the ladder. They write
Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.
Group 2 gets this. They note that it’s extremely abstract, so they decide to make it more specific. They write
Any competent Magic: the Gathering player will beat the best one in the world at least 10% of the time. Statistical models of baseball games show that a significant amount of variance cannot be attributed to any stable ability of players and teams. Even the most carefully hedged investment strategy can be wiped out by a black swan.
Group 3 does a dramatic reading of this passage, and maybe Group 4 tries to guess what the original passage was.
Example:
Group 2′s first passage was this, from Poor Richard’s Almanac:
The Family of Fools is ancient.
Necessity never made a good bargain.
If Pride leads the Van, Beggary brings up the Rear.
There’s many witty men whose brains can’t fill their bellies.
Weighty Questions ask for deliberate Answers.
They decide to add specificity. Each group member picks a proverb to translate, and they get:
The man who is amazed that whenever he looks at his clock, it reads “11:11,” would in prehistory be the man who thinks he can control the weather with a ritual.
A thirstier person will pay more for water.
If you won’t accept handouts from your relatives now, you might be begging from strangers later.
The market value for a degree in English is pretty damn low.
When given a difficult question, wait 5 minutes, by an actual clock, before proposing solutions.
Group 3 gets this, and decides to take it even further down the ladder into specificity, giving real-life examples of these situations, or empirical economic formulae.
Example:
Group 3 gets a printout of The eHow page on selecting a digital camera. They take it up the ladder, and write
“Higher resolution and zoom capability should be priorities. Be sure to use a good quality lens. Look for cameras with more and better features. Don’t pay more than you can afford!”
Group 4 gets this. They note that they can’t reverse this process, since too much information has been destroyed, but they can further abstract it to
“Figure out what you want in a camera, and how much you’re willing to pay.”
We’ll totally do retroactive awards for anything we try from Check Consequentialism.
Oh, thanks!