http://futurity.org/health-medicine/mind-body-connection-is-a-touchy-subject/

"In a series of six experiments documented in the June 25 issue of the journal Science, psychologists demonstrate how dramatically the sense of touch affects how the world is viewed.

Interviewers holding a heavy clipboard, compared to a light one, thought job applicants took their work more seriously.

Subjects who read a passage about an interaction between two people were more likely to characterize it as adversarial if they had first handled rough jigsaw puzzle pieces, compared to smooth ones.

And people sitting in hard, cushionless chairs were less willing to compromise in price negotiations than people who sat in soft, comfortable chairs."


We are such intensely physical beings.  Given how hard it is to separate mind and body, it begs the question as to what is "me the person with free will" versus "me the animal governed by instinct."

It seems impossible to try to behave consciously at every and all moments.  It seems the best we can do is take advantage of the conscious moments we have and shape ourselves (and the instincts we revert to in all the other unconscious moments).  Establishing good habits, making irreversible commitments, creating a "personal infrastructure," shaping identity, etc.  If someone has to pull my puppet strings, I'd rather it be me.

“Reverse Survivorship Bias”
Juhani T. Linnainmaa
University of Chicago Booth School of Business

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1588146

Abstract:

“Mutual funds often disappear following poor performance. When this poor performance is partly attributable to negative idiosyncratic shocks, the fund’s estimated alpha understates its true alpha. This paper develops and estimates a structural model to evaluate this bias. I find that the bias in the mean of the observed alpha distribution is approximately 1 percent per year. When I correct for this bias using historical data, I find that the majority of fund managers still have negative net alphas but the average is not nearly as low as what the fund-level estimates suggest. This reverse survivorship bias affects all studies that run fund-level regressions to draw inferences about fund managers’ abilities.”

 
This paper is a critique of the prevailing notion that “you can’t argue with success.”  Success is related to luck as well as to skill, in investment management as in anything else.  When a fund does well in a short timeframe, it is not necessarily because it is well-managed.  Conversely, when a fund does poorly in a short timeframe, it is not necessarily because it is poorly managed.  The issue arises when investors use risk-adjusted returns to infer skill (or alpha).

Linnainmaa recognizes that when mutual funds disappear because of poor performance, sometimes failure is due to what he calls “negative idiosyncratic shocks,” or in layman’s terms, one-off bad-luck events.  The fund manager might be skilled (i.e. have positive alpha) but the fund could still have poor returns.  A subset of mutual funds which have disappeared probably have these characteristics.  

The paper is actually a critique of “you can’t argue with failure.”  There’s a tendency to point to failure as a direct indication of ability, and even character.  Linnainmaa highlights the gap between truth and the truth we estimate from the data that is available to us.

This is the original article that I started writing in November 2008 that led to my idea for a book on trust.  It was put into the pipeline for a semiannual magazine for business leaders, but the editorial and risk-related challenges stretched out the timeline to the point where I've decided to just put it up here.  Hope someone finds it interesting.

This year is winding down and I'm spending most of my time on two things:  

(1)  Dissertation - a tightly scoped piece of primary research on knowledge-sharing in a management consultancy, grounded in the literature on the economic psychology of trust; and 

(2) Book - a wide-ranging co-authored series of research and case study-based perspectives with the overarching theme of Trust and its growing importance today.

Here's an early version of Chapter 1 of the still-untitled book.  Let me know what you think ... and whether you think we're crazy.  We'll learn more from a beating than a pat.

I normally don’t write restaurant reviews, since most restaurants are well-covered and who needs one more, right?  But a quick search on Google showed no substantive reviews anywhere of new restaurant Cam Phat, so I decided to make this my one net-new contribution to the wonderful organism I call the Interweb.  It’s rare that you get a chance to say something unsaid across the 1 trillion existing webpages.  (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/we-knew-web-was-big.html) 

It all started with a double-take as I was sitting at Rasa Sayang (Malaysia) in London Chinatown near my flat.  I glanced out the window – what?  A new Vietnamese restaurant in Central London?  Done.

Central London is a virtual Vietnamese-food wasteland.  Just a handful of restaurants and most of them marred by lack of competition and the desire to cater to unschooled palates.  Banh hoi?  Bo 7 mon?  Mam nem?  Don’t even ask.

Eternal optimist that I am, however, I was still hopeful about this new entrant.  
Cam Phat is nestled on a side street in Chinatown, surrounded by Chinese shops offering variants on roast duck and dim sum.  It looks strangely new from the green outside signage, in comparison to its neighbors.  According to the waitress, however, it’s under the same ownership as the previous Chinese tenant, Laughing Buddha.  

Its vast Chinese-Vietnamese fusion menu (link) reveals its roots.  I eschewed the Chinese-influenced dishes and opted for the more quintessentially Vietnamese plates:  goi cuon (summer rolls), banh cuon (folded rice sheets stuffed with pork), and the mixed meat pho (beef noodle soup).

Goi Cuon

Victory.  These are probably the best summer rolls I’ve had in Central London (though keep in mind the bar is low here).  The key to great goi cuon is freshness and timing.  The rice paper stiffens up as the water evaporates, leaving a relatively brief window when it is both dry and soft.  These were fresh.  Wrapped in stretchy translucent rice paper, stuffed with delicate prawns, lettuce and vermicelli noodles, with the classic long green onion, I devoured them with relish.  A bit smaller than I’m used to, but I can deal with that.  The dark peanut dipping sauce was too sweet and dense for my taste but reasonable.  The sliced red peppers in the sauce are a nice touch if you like spicy food as I do.

Banh Cuon

This might be the only place in all of Central London that makes banh cuon - I haven’t seen it elsewhere anyway.  So I mentally clicked my heels when I saw it on the menu.  The cut-to-the-chase verdict:  not bad.  Strong presentation, the slices of Vietnamese pork meat fanned out next to  glistening rice-sheet folds encasing crumbled pork visible through thin sheets.  A scattering of fried shallots on top offer a nice crunchy texture to counterbalance the softness of the rice-flour sheets.  The nuoc mam, or fragrant fish sauce, was fine and served in a bowl on the side, to be ladled on top of the banh cuon.  The banh cuon was clearly not made fresh but that’s hard to get unless you’re in a specialty banh cuon shop with scale.  More pork inside the banh cuon would have been nice.  I also like my banh cuon served warmer than it was delivered to the table, since it cools down slightly when you splash fish sauce on it anyway, but perhaps I’m being nitpicky.  All in all, not bad if you’ve got a hankering in Chinatown.

Mixed Meat and Meatball Pho

The pho was my least favorite of the three dishes.  It was edible but I can’t say much more than that.  The broth was muddy-looking and not especially flavorful, which is the crux of my complaint.  For pho  lovers, the savoury broth is everything.  It should be made from scratch and beef bones simmered from the wee hours of the morning and clarified until the broth is rich, clear and deeply satisfying.  This broth was not.  The “mixed meat” was not impressive, either.  No tripe?  No tendon?  No brisket?   The style is North Vietnamese, which is less fancified than pho from the South, but still I say blah.  The vegetables were also skimpy, as you can see from the picture.  The wide slippery noodles were fine though I personally prefer the thinner South Vietnamese rice noodles.  Easier to get ahold of – my chopstick technique is not fantastic.  Anyway, I gussied it up with bright-red sriracha chili and hoisin sauce, which made it at least edible.  I probably wouldn’t get this dish again here though, even if I had a pho craving and was in the neighborhood.  Viet on Greek Street is nearby and slightly better, though not optimal either.

I place heavy emphasis on food versus service, but to give credit where it’s due, the service was surprisingly good for a Vietnamese restaurant -- likely attributable to the near-emptiness of the place as well as my blatant photographing of all the dishes.

All in all, I’d come back but would try a different dish than the pho.  And now we return to our regularly scheduled program.