The challenging thing about people making movies (according to my cognition theory) is to balance the decisions they make, on the movie theme and the way it is presented, between two not-clearly-defined borders:
- on the one hand you want the movie to present patterns that the people can relate, to raise empathy (ταύτιση in greek) and find a way to channel your messages to their emotions and Driving Forces... So you need something close to the patterns that they are already used to!
- on the other hand you want the movie to present something new, non-detrimental, non-usual, non in-context, in order to capture the attention of their Selector (and only through this you can make your signals travel deep inside their minds)... So you need something not really close to the patterns that they are already used to!
Thus, you need something that they know and at the same time something that they don't know! You are presented with an upper and lower boundary of familiarity that is different for every individual, so there is no universal solution to this problem and that is why there are no movies that are equally liked by all people in the world!
The only thing you can do is aggregate your (speculative) data, make an estimation of the lower and upper boundary of your target group and work with that goal in mind. Still, you won't please all people equally, but you'll do the best you can (from a statistical point of view).
Tuesday, 9 November 2010
Saturday, 6 November 2010
A long overdue status update
I think it's time to say a few things about what's been going on in my head (not much actually :)) the past 5 months.
First of all, I've hit a brick wall! I realized that the brain does not compare the expected input with the actual input for action ONLY, but for EVERYTHING! I.e. in whatever state we're currently in, there are some things that are normal to expect and we consider "in-context" and anything is more or less unexpected and considered "out-of-context". It doesn't have to do only with action! This comparison of expected-actual inputs is constant.
A typical example that is very easy to prove at home, on the road, anywhere, but only for men (ladies excuse me) is if you move your... "equipment" on the other side of the crotch than your "usual" side. Whatever you do for the next minutes you will notice it! It will constantly send you signals that are unexpected/out-of-context and your Selector will can't help but notice it and create a driving pocket out of it (and drag your thought process towards it, if you don't have anything better to do, i.e. a bigger driving pocket).
And the sideeffect of this observation of mine is that: not only the in/out-of context comparison happens all the time and not only during action (as my theory predicted up until now), it is appears to move from out-of-context to in-context without action and feedback (although I'm not sure about that, because I have not been able to explain its mechanics up until now and it feels wrong). Going back to my previous example, after a while you will stop noticing it and after a lot you will consider it normal. It will have become in-context to you without actually acting upon it to make it in-context!
Troubling isn't it?
As you can imagine, this disruptive observation was enough to disorient my reasoning for months... since I had to erase and rewind; restructure my theory to incorporate and explain these processes.
In order to overcome these difficulties, I have amended a few things:
With this mechanism, the Selector does not need to deal with the mundane task of comparing DPs and sending signal. This is done automatically by a "dumb" Battery. The Selector's operation directly affect the reinforcing process of the Battery by energizing DPs (which will make the Battery divert more of its capacity towards this DP) and this is why I originally thought that the Selector was part of this operation as well.
This mechanism also has the added advantage that it explains INACTION!! (a very troubling question that I had for years). Inaction is simply conflicting strong DPs that each steal a large part of the Battery's capacity not leaving enough signal for any DP to get to the other side (the action endpoints) and convert this DP into action.
So if I tell you to steal that candy, you will briefly "taste" the candy in your head and this will create a DP out of it. But on the same time it will also bring to your head the memories of getting scolded by your mother for steal stuff and this will create another DP (probably stronger) that will steal a lot of the Battery capacity and not leave enough signal for the original DP to manage to activate the action endpoints and act upon your will to take the candy and eat it.
Of course, the situation also depends on how paved the road from the DP to the action endpoints is. So, let's take depression as an example. You have a large DP in your head about something that bothers you a lot, e.g. the death of a loved one. It pains you to think about it. It is out-of-context (you're not used to it) so you focus on it. The brain tries to make everything from out-of-context to in-context. The problem is that as much signal as the Battery sends (which will probably loop and create thoughts), you can't find a way to make your mind at ease, to attach it to something in-context and stop dealing with it. If it was something like "Oh, why is the mop on the floor? Ah, I just remembered that my wife told me she left in a big hurry", you can easily attach it to something in-context. You saw the mop on the floor, it was out-of-context. The DP made you deal with it, mostly by thinking upon it. Through this added signals sent by the Battery, you managed to recollect your wife telling you about leaving in a hurry, and you put two and two together. This is now in-context because it might have happened again or you might have done the same in the past etc...
But in the death of a loved one, as much as your brains tries to attach all those unknown/out-of-context patterns to something familiar, it can't. Thus, this DP dominates your brain and steals most or all of your Battery capacity, rendering you incapable of doing anything! You can of course perform your bodily functions, because you have done them all your life, the paths are very well paved and even the slightest signal from the Battery can push you to perform them. But you can't do anything else, until this DP decreases in strength.
So there you have it: an explanation for depression, inaction and the method for making a decision (if you've followed my reasoning up until now, you'll have understood that there is actually no true decision; if the signal manages to reach the action endpoints, we act upon it, until this DP ceases or some other DP steals us the battery capacity necessary to perform the action. There is no decision anywhere on the action process!).
I'll continue this post in a few hours, because I have to go.
First of all, I've hit a brick wall! I realized that the brain does not compare the expected input with the actual input for action ONLY, but for EVERYTHING! I.e. in whatever state we're currently in, there are some things that are normal to expect and we consider "in-context" and anything is more or less unexpected and considered "out-of-context". It doesn't have to do only with action! This comparison of expected-actual inputs is constant.
A typical example that is very easy to prove at home, on the road, anywhere, but only for men (ladies excuse me) is if you move your... "equipment" on the other side of the crotch than your "usual" side. Whatever you do for the next minutes you will notice it! It will constantly send you signals that are unexpected/out-of-context and your Selector will can't help but notice it and create a driving pocket out of it (and drag your thought process towards it, if you don't have anything better to do, i.e. a bigger driving pocket).
And the sideeffect of this observation of mine is that: not only the in/out-of context comparison happens all the time and not only during action (as my theory predicted up until now), it is appears to move from out-of-context to in-context without action and feedback (although I'm not sure about that, because I have not been able to explain its mechanics up until now and it feels wrong). Going back to my previous example, after a while you will stop noticing it and after a lot you will consider it normal. It will have become in-context to you without actually acting upon it to make it in-context!
Troubling isn't it?
As you can imagine, this disruptive observation was enough to disorient my reasoning for months... since I had to erase and rewind; restructure my theory to incorporate and explain these processes.
In order to overcome these difficulties, I have amended a few things:
- The Selector has lost a lot of its former "glory". The operation of reinforcing signals from the DPs to get the signal to "the other side" is now done automatically by the "Battery".
With this mechanism, the Selector does not need to deal with the mundane task of comparing DPs and sending signal. This is done automatically by a "dumb" Battery. The Selector's operation directly affect the reinforcing process of the Battery by energizing DPs (which will make the Battery divert more of its capacity towards this DP) and this is why I originally thought that the Selector was part of this operation as well.
This mechanism also has the added advantage that it explains INACTION!! (a very troubling question that I had for years). Inaction is simply conflicting strong DPs that each steal a large part of the Battery's capacity not leaving enough signal for any DP to get to the other side (the action endpoints) and convert this DP into action.
So if I tell you to steal that candy, you will briefly "taste" the candy in your head and this will create a DP out of it. But on the same time it will also bring to your head the memories of getting scolded by your mother for steal stuff and this will create another DP (probably stronger) that will steal a lot of the Battery capacity and not leave enough signal for the original DP to manage to activate the action endpoints and act upon your will to take the candy and eat it.
Of course, the situation also depends on how paved the road from the DP to the action endpoints is. So, let's take depression as an example. You have a large DP in your head about something that bothers you a lot, e.g. the death of a loved one. It pains you to think about it. It is out-of-context (you're not used to it) so you focus on it. The brain tries to make everything from out-of-context to in-context. The problem is that as much signal as the Battery sends (which will probably loop and create thoughts), you can't find a way to make your mind at ease, to attach it to something in-context and stop dealing with it. If it was something like "Oh, why is the mop on the floor? Ah, I just remembered that my wife told me she left in a big hurry", you can easily attach it to something in-context. You saw the mop on the floor, it was out-of-context. The DP made you deal with it, mostly by thinking upon it. Through this added signals sent by the Battery, you managed to recollect your wife telling you about leaving in a hurry, and you put two and two together. This is now in-context because it might have happened again or you might have done the same in the past etc...
But in the death of a loved one, as much as your brains tries to attach all those unknown/out-of-context patterns to something familiar, it can't. Thus, this DP dominates your brain and steals most or all of your Battery capacity, rendering you incapable of doing anything! You can of course perform your bodily functions, because you have done them all your life, the paths are very well paved and even the slightest signal from the Battery can push you to perform them. But you can't do anything else, until this DP decreases in strength.
So there you have it: an explanation for depression, inaction and the method for making a decision (if you've followed my reasoning up until now, you'll have understood that there is actually no true decision; if the signal manages to reach the action endpoints, we act upon it, until this DP ceases or some other DP steals us the battery capacity necessary to perform the action. There is no decision anywhere on the action process!).
I'll continue this post in a few hours, because I have to go.
Monday, 18 October 2010
A quote
"It's better to do something for nothing, than nothing for something."
I just conjured it up...
Sunday, 17 October 2010
Cognition theory application example: Regression & Solver for marketing research
I just had a very interesting idea, while trying to decide on the lists of questions and format that we will use in our Corporate Venturing project at ALBA:
You start by describing the basic product and then ask why would you choose to buy/use this product.
You give the most probable 5-6 reasons and ask them to fill in how much they agree with each one of these reasons (with a grading, let's say, from 0 - 10).
To combine this with my cognition theory, this question is like probing for their driving forces and see how much each of the reasons is capable of generating a driving pocket for them to act upon it.
The larger the summed up grade of all these reasons, the larger the probability that this person is going to be your future customer (assuming of course he's telling the truth), because it means that the idea of buying this product (that you planted for a few moments into his head by asking him to contemplate on this possibility) is capable of energizing more and stronger driving pockets and thus give him the willingness to act on his 'need'.
After you have asked this, you continue with all your other questions, regarding the nature of the product, the price, the place, the promotion etc.
The novelty here is this: after you have given this questionnaire to a lot of people and have a sample that can give you statistically significant answers, you run a regression analysis on the answered questions by using as primers (independent variables) the possible answers of the first question!
For example, let's say that in the first question you asked (with very simplistic wording, just for the sake of this example):
1) Why would you use it?
a) to be different that the rest
b) i like the way it smells
c) it helps me do this X thing faster
d) something else (but something NEED-oriented, so not about price or something)
So, after regression you would get something like
AnswerofQuestion2 = 0.8*a + 0.01*b + 0.2*c - 0.09*d + c
AnswerofQuestion3 = something similar
i.e. the answer of every other question can be deduced (and interpolated later on) by what DRIVES your potential consumer.
And if you get this right and get statistically significant coefficients for every independent variable, you can then use Excel solver and see what kind of consumer is your ideal consumer. What I mean is that you can try to maximize the price that they are willing to pay, so see which inputs in variables a,b,c,d would give you the best results! ("What kind of need priorities should my future consumers have in order to be willing to pay the larger possible price?")
Even better, if you have demographics data and know what percentage of the entire market each "mini-segment" represents, you make a calculated variable which is the part of the market that the "a,b,c,d" mini-segment represents and try to maximize not price but:
MAX(price_willing_to_pay * segment_size_that_answer_this_abcd_combination * probability_of_buying)
(the probability of buying is probably the a*b*c*d/40).
And if you find what a,b,c,d combination is the one that maximizes your potential profit, you then input these values into your regression model and you get the answers that a characteristic customer of this 'segment' would give to all your other questions and thus you now know exactly how you should construct your offering!!!!
Of course this is the main idea behind the model. In practice, you would want to play with ranges, so the (a,b,c,d) combination need not being one and only, you can have a sweet spot and a slack both above and below this spot that you can play with and your consumers are still more or less the same (thus the mini-segment becomes a segment).
Furthermore, you need to make sure that your consumer will be also capable of buying your product, so aside from this process you need to also remove all possible obstacles in making his effort a reality (so take care of availability, payment methods, etc).
Wednesday, 11 August 2010
Why does it always happen to me?
The examples are endless and we have all wondered about it many, many times in our lives in the past, and we will do it again and again in the future; you can be sure of that.
Something that disturbs as happens and we can't help it but wonder why is it always like that? Why the garbage can is always full when I want to empty just one more small thing inside? Why does the toast bread falls always on its upper side to the floor? Why has the bus arrived (and left) only half a minute before I arrived at the bus stop?
We think we see these patterns and, although the should follow a random pattern, they seem to not. Instead it seems as we're in a trail of bad luck...
Well, if you have understood my theory thus far, this phenomenon is very easy to explain: the answer of course is not that these situations are not random, it's that our perception is skewed...
You see everything that disturbs you creates feedback. Everything that does neither disturb you nor pleases you creates no feedback at all. No feedback equals no memory, no recollection of the fact...
So the half times that the glass of water is half-full, you don't get disturbed (you don't get delighted either to create positive feedback) so the phenomenon goes unnoticed. If your Selector was occupied with anything else at that given moment, you will act and not even realize it (the snail will take care of everything else).
The other half times that the glass is half-empty, you do get disturbed and this creates feedback and you will remember it. And since it has happened in the past as well (and the connections between the pattern and your DFs had been strengthened), the signal will dissipate less now, creating an even greater agitation of the driving force, a stronger driving pocket and a strong willingness to get rid of that phenomenon. When your Selector tries to deal with this situation, it does not have any recollection of the "good times". Your brain only remembers the things that displeased you, leading to the aforementioned perception.
All in all, we are hardwired to remember only the bad, in order to avoid them in the future, and play back all the good again and again until we're fed up with them and they turn invisible, they go unnoticed.
Something that disturbs as happens and we can't help it but wonder why is it always like that? Why the garbage can is always full when I want to empty just one more small thing inside? Why does the toast bread falls always on its upper side to the floor? Why has the bus arrived (and left) only half a minute before I arrived at the bus stop?
We think we see these patterns and, although the should follow a random pattern, they seem to not. Instead it seems as we're in a trail of bad luck...
Well, if you have understood my theory thus far, this phenomenon is very easy to explain: the answer of course is not that these situations are not random, it's that our perception is skewed...
You see everything that disturbs you creates feedback. Everything that does neither disturb you nor pleases you creates no feedback at all. No feedback equals no memory, no recollection of the fact...
So the half times that the glass of water is half-full, you don't get disturbed (you don't get delighted either to create positive feedback) so the phenomenon goes unnoticed. If your Selector was occupied with anything else at that given moment, you will act and not even realize it (the snail will take care of everything else).
The other half times that the glass is half-empty, you do get disturbed and this creates feedback and you will remember it. And since it has happened in the past as well (and the connections between the pattern and your DFs had been strengthened), the signal will dissipate less now, creating an even greater agitation of the driving force, a stronger driving pocket and a strong willingness to get rid of that phenomenon. When your Selector tries to deal with this situation, it does not have any recollection of the "good times". Your brain only remembers the things that displeased you, leading to the aforementioned perception.
All in all, we are hardwired to remember only the bad, in order to avoid them in the future, and play back all the good again and again until we're fed up with them and they turn invisible, they go unnoticed.
Wednesday, 28 July 2010
Human shortsightedness
One think that can be derived from my theory but have not said it directly, so I should elaborate more:
Stimuli from the environment traverse the neural connections and reach the driving forces. By agitating the driving forces they create driving pockets that represent your pleasure potential (all known till here). If the connection between the current stimuli and the driving force is not very thick, then the signal will deteriorate somewhat along the path and will create a smaller driving pocket. Thus we will not be as keen to act on the current stimuli, because we won’t expect as much pleasure!
This is why humans are so shortsighted in their motives and reward expectations. They are engineered to look for ephemeral pleasures and not goals and future pleasures that will come after a lot of suffering. Because the current suffering (strong stimulus, close to DF, big Driving Pocket) will be compared to the much further pleasure probability (weak stimulus due to distance from the DF, weak DP) and the person will choose the easiest route. That is why to plan far ahead into the future and keep your discipline you need a very big reward promised for the future (so that the signal does not dissipate, because it is now closer to the DF, because the big reward is closer to the DF pattern-matching-wise) or you need another reason to get this big DP that you need. For example religion uses a big future fear to compensate for the current suffering to deter people from indulging in ephemeral pleasures and thus the alternative of future doubtful pleasure becomes plausible now and, despite its weak DP, the person chooses to act by it. And to be on the safe side they make sure that they emphasize all the time how certain your future pleasure is in order to forge a path from their stimuli to your driving force and thus create bigger driving pockets (because if the path is thicker, the signal dissipates less and thus agitates more the DF and creates a bigger DP).
Concluding, the distance of the environmental stimuli from the DFs, because it is translated into less activation of DPs (which are our motives for action) make us shortsighted in our goals.
Monday, 26 July 2010
A comment on my last post
What I have forgotten to mention in my main text is that:
- When time passes the strength of the neural interconnections diminishes. Of course, the thick the path in the first place, the longer it will take for it to diminish completely. And let's not forget that if you use these paths a lot, they will be strengthened by feedback for whatever other reason you got pleasure at the period that they happened to be active (because all active paths are strengthened), so this is the way we don't forget. But if we have a lot of time since the last time we recalled a memory, then... it might escape us. The signal does not go all the way and although we get pretty close (relevant images and memories are brought into our attention by the selector's attempt to recollect that memory), we still can't seem to find the right word/image/whatever...
A sidenote: there are MANY conclusions that can be drawn by the theory, I'm a bit lazy to write them all down (the ones I have thought anyways). I might be posting some in the future. But I will make a greater effort in gathering them all up, when I believe that my theory is complete and needs arguments to support it.
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